Introduction

On 2 April 2005, John Paul II died after reigning as pope for nearly twenty- seven years, one of the longest pontificates in the history of the papacy. As a witness to his sede vacante, or the vacancy of the papal see, I saw pious pilgrims and curious Romans flock to St Peter’s to view the dead pope. My landlady invited me to join her, as she made her way to the Vatican in order to “witness history.” The entire world stopped to pay homage to the popular pontiff. But as a historian of papal Rome, I was more interested in the local perspective of the city’s inhabitants. A quick trip to Pasquino—the focal point for church and government criticism in early modern and modern Rome—rewarded me with a heap of encomia dedicated to John Paul’s memory rather than the sardonic and often inscrutable invectives called pasquinades that usually covered the ancient statue. John Paul’s vacant see caught both Rome and the world in a reflective moment, as they focused on the good deeds of the Polish pope and on the election of his successor. But four hundred years earlier, a different scene regularly played itself out in Rome during the vacant see. Early modern Romans, too, were caught up in a collective moment in the wake of a pope’s death. On the one hand, just like their modern counterparts, Romans stirred with excitement and curiosity as they sought to discover news of the election of the next Vicar of Christ. On the other hand, a flood of negative emotions washed over the city and its populace as Romans assessed the pontificate of the dead pope and embarked on vendettas against enemies and neighborhood rivals. Romans voiced criticism in the forms of pasquinades posted on Pasquino and ballads sung in the streets against popes who raised tariffs on staple foods and curtailed the feu- dal liberties of the barony. In the case of popes who ruled with a heavy and severe hand, Romans could unite in collective opposition to their memory by assaulting their statues on the Capitoline Hill, the seat of the communal government and its officials. More frequent, however, were the brawls and popular duels that took place in the squares, streets, and other public spaces of the city. Romans believed the vacant see was the ideal time to execute vengeance against those who had slighted them, since popular opinion and tradition held that the pope’s justice slept until the election of his successor. The coming of vagabonds, bandits, and soldiers from nearby towns and subject cities in the provinces only exacerbated the violence. Consequently, the vacant see opened up a new world of possibilities for Romans, who were used to respecting (or at least paying lip service to) law and order, as well as the subsequent social hierarchy, when the pope occupied his see (sede piena).

This study seeks to understand and explain this enduring mentalité—to borrow a term from the Annales School—of the Roman people that held the vacant see to be the optimal time to seek vengeance against enemies and to protest against the dead pope’s regime.1 This mentalité persisted among Romans throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, Carbonari con- spirators planned insurrections in Rome and Bologna during Pius VIII’s vacant see of 1830.2 And the custom of writing pasquinades against the reputation and memory of popes after their deaths continued well into the 19th century. However, it was the early modern vacant sees that proved to be the most tur- bulent. This study focuses on the years 1559 to 1655—that is, from the vacant sees of Paul IV and Innocent X, a time of tremendous change for the papacy as it lost much of its international political clout at the conclusion of the Italian Wars (1559) and the Thirty Years’ War (1648), while gaining a great deal of reli- gious authority in the Catholic world with the conclusion of the Council of Trent (1563).3 The years between 1559 and 1655 also proved important to the papacy at home—in Rome and the Papal States. It was at this time that the papacy took major strides in developing a centralized, absolutist state. Popes between Paul IV and Innocent X subdued rebellious cities and independent polities with Papal States, tamed the rambunctious nobility in the provinces, and curtailed the liberties of the Popolo Romano, the civic magistrates of Rome.4 Moreover, they sought to discipline the masses by criminalizing popular cus- toms and mores. It was in these years that some of the most violent and tumul- tuous vacant sees took place in Rome. Indeed, the vacant sees of 1559, 1590, and 1644 witnessed violent demonstrations against the memory of Paul IV, Sixtus V, and Urban VIII, each of whom had imposed heavy taxes and stringent laws on the people. The vacant see could then serve as a reaction against and a check on the papal pretensions to absolutism.

1 On the Annales School’s concept of mentalité, see the five essays in The Annales School: Critical Assessments, ed. Stuart Clark (London, 1999), 2:381–489, especially Peter Burke’s “Strengths and Weaknesses of the History of Mentalities,” 2:442–56. 2 Steven C. Hughes, Crime, Disorder and the Risorgimento: The Politics of Policing in Bologna (Cambridge, Eng., 1994), pp. 105–06. 3 Anthony D. Wright, The Early Modern Papacy: From the Council of Trent to the French Revolution, 1564–1789 (London, 1999). 4 On this process, see Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince, One Body and Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, trans. Susan Haskins (Cambridge, Eng., 1987); and Jean Delumeau, “Le progrès de la centralisation dans l’Etat pontificial au XVIe siècle,” Revue histo- rique 226 (1961), 399–410.