The secrets of the conclave

With a papal conclave convening in Rome to elect the next pope, we wondered what were conclaves like in Shakespeare’s time? Scholar John M. Hunt, author of The Vacant See in Early Modern Italy: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum, shares what’s changed from the early modern period and what remains the same today.

With the death of Pope Francis on April 21 at the age of 88, the papacy enters an interregnal phase called the sede vacante, meaning the empty see in Italian. This is a period between the death of a pope and the election of his successor. In Shakespeare’s age, the sede vacante was a tumultuous moment, as rival factions led by the Colonna and Orsini families (the Roman versions of Capulets and Montagues) clashed in violent street brawls and ordinary Romans took to the squares to vent their frustrations against the reigns of severe popes, especially those who had raised taxes on bread, oil, and vino romanesco, the table wine of the laborers and artisans. Every sede vacante had the potential to be explosive. One of the most turbulent occurred after the death of Paul IV in 1559. Frustrated with his overzealous use of the Inquisition to repress religious dissent and his brief but disastrous war with Philip II of Spain, Romans marched on the Inquisition palace and burned the place down after freeing its prisoners. The next day, another crowd stormed the Capitoline Hill, religious site of the ancient Romans and then the seat of Rome’s civic government, where they put a statue of Paul IV, condemned it as a tyrant, and severed its head. The retributive justice of the sede vacante had been served.

Today, sedi vacanti are much quieter affairs. Pilgrims pour into St. Peter’s Square where they jostle with reporters and their equipment. Much of the world, even among non-Catholics, is eager for news of the imminent election of the next pope. Speculations run wild as talking heads weigh in on the papabili (those cardinals favored to succeed to the papacy) and bookmakers places odds on the election’s outcome. Information on the election is scarce and unreliable. The cardinals—all 135 of them under the age of 80 and thus eligible to participate in the election—are forbidden from discussing the politicking that frequently occurs before entering the conclave, the location of the election since 1274. Meaning “with key” from the Latin cum clave, the conclave is hermetically sealed and takes place in the Sistine Chapel inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, although before 1878, the election was frequently held in the Quirinal Palace in central Rome or at other Italian cities. No one except the cardinal electors and their staff are allowed inside the Apostolic Palace. The Vatican gendarmes inspect the Sistine Chapel before the conclave opens, sweeping the area to uncover electronic spying devices and installing signal jammers to disrupt all forms of electronic communication with the world beyond its confines. Since 1963, the cardinals have taken, on average, two days to elect a pope. The modern public and media do not have the patience of Shakespeare’s era, a time when conclaves typically lasted between two to three months.

As today, 16th- and 17th-century people took a great interest in the election and the conclave. Although papal officials sealed most of the entrances to the Apostolic Palace and posted a small army, led by members of the prominent Savelli family, around its perimeters, all sorts of people regularly infiltrated the conclave, eager for information on the election to further their political and economic interests. Others were just curious to know more about one of the most important events in the life of papal Rome.

The ambassadors of the great Catholic powers of Europe—France and Spain—were particularly adept at penetrating the secrets of the conclave. Since 1562, they had gained along with the Holy Roman Emperor the right of exclusion (jus exclusivae), the ability to veto one candidate to the papacy who might threaten their state’s interests. Consequently, their resident ambassadors in Rome kept abreast of the election as best as they could—slipping notes in the containers porters used to bring food to the cardinals or bribing conclave servants for the results of the election’s daily rounds of voting. Philip II of Spain had his ambassador bring letters to the cardinals with a list of his preferred candidates, all of whom had to have anti-French sentiments.

Ambassadors, as well as much of the literate, well-to-do public, could also turn to the avvisi, hand-written newsletters that conveyed the latest political and economic news and gossip in Rome, Italy, and Europe. In their reports, newsletter writers give surprising accurate details about the ongoings in the conclave, suggesting they had access to inside sources. From the avvisi, we learn the status of each day’s balloting, the candidates favored to win enough votes, and even the bickering among the cardinals locked in the conclave. Although the avvisi frequently disseminated exaggerated or false accounts, they rarely provoked the spontaneous rumors that swirled around the conclave and spread through the streets of Rome. These were the result of misunderstandings of the crowds gathered around the conclave that in several cases misinterpreted shouts in favor of one of the papabili. Romans were particularly keen on the election of a Roman cardinal.

Above all, the principal source of rumors were the bookmakers in the Banchi, the banking district of Rome, located on the opposite bank of the Tiber from the Vatican. These bookmakers, usually notaries and merchants, took wagers on the election and kept running accounts of the odds of each cardinal’s accession to the papal throne. Because the betting on the election generated so many rumors and disturbances in the city, and bankrupted several bankers and merchants, Pope Gregory XIV outlawed it with the bull, Cogit Nos, of 1591 under the pain of severe fines and up to 10 years in the papal galleys.

Shortly after the prohibition of gambling on papal elections was instituted, a new form of obtaining information appeared for a public curious to know more about the conclave. This was the conclave print, one-sheet prints of engravings depicting the sede vacante and the subsequent election. Each conclave print detailed these events through a map of the conclave and a series of images, often compartmentalized in boxes that displayed the ceremonies and customs of the events surrounding the conclave. In the conclave print of the engraver Giovanni Giacomo Rossi of 1655, we see images in boxes that illustrate, along with captions in Italian, the caporioni, the heads of Rome’s fourteen districts, leading their men on patrol to keep the peace, the faithful venerating the deceased pope as he lies on a funeral bier, and the cardinals entering the conclave.

These were activities the papacy did not seek to conceal from the public. But in other scenes from the engravings, Rossi has shown details to which the majority of the city’s inhabitants would never have access, such as the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel in the act of casting their ballots and the cells in which they slept during the conclave. The print even provides the location of each cardinal’s cell in the Apostolic Palace, complete with a number that corresponds to their name.

Why would the papacy, so solicitous of keeping the conclave a secret, allow such prints to be licensed and sold? The answer lies in their nonspecific nature. Rossi’s print of the sede vacante of Innocent X and the conclave that would elect Alexander VII does not depict these events in real time. The print is dated to January 18, 1655, the opening of the conclave, but portrays ceremonies, such as the carrying of the newly elected pope to St. Peter’s, that were yet to happen. In fact, Rossi and other engravers regularly recycled images from previous prints, and so provided a stylized image of the conclave. Nevertheless, the continued production and circulation of conclave prints attests to their popularity and the thirst for information on the papal election in the early modern era. They helped their viewers visualize the concealed activities of the conclave without giving away any of its secrets.

The conclave to elect Francis’s successor begins on May 7. Other than the cardinals and their servants, few will be privy to its proceedings. Journalists, bookmakers, and Vatican observers may try to divine its outcomes, a difficult prospect considering the election’s unpredictable nature and the papacy’s security measures. They will learn, like much of the world, the election’s result with the billowing of the white smoke from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney. Until then, we can only imagine what goes on inside its space by watching the 2024 film Conclave.

About the author

John M. Hunt is an historian specializing in the history of early modern Italy. He is the author of The Vacant See in Early Modern Italy: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum (2016) and has written over 20 articles and essays on diverse topics ranging from gambling on papal elections in Rome to witchcraft in Enlightenment-era Venice. He is currently finishing a history of the papacy from its foundations to the present, and is working on a book on gambling in the Italy of Caravaggio.