Cardinals and the Vacant See

Chapter 20 Cardinals and the Vacant See

John M. Hunt

With Sixtus v’s death on 27 August 1590 the Papal States fell into the disarray and violent disorder that often accompanied the Sede Vacante, the period between a pope’s death and the election of his successor. A few days after the pope’s death the exiled Sienese noble and captain, Alfonso Piccolomini, with his band of brigands reclaimed his fief, Monte Marciano, located in the March- es near Ancona. A courier brought this news to the papal court, adding that Piccolomini had said, “in the Sede Vacante everything was permissible.”1 Three weeks later, Piccolomini was still roaming throughout the Papal States, holding travellers for ransom and looting villas and farmhouses. During that October the bandit-lord petitioned the College of Cardinals to restore his feudal rights over his fief. The cardinals responded that “it would not be wise to make a deci- sion [on the matter], which might cause further problems in these troubling times.”2 This episode involving Piccolomini highlights two intertwined aspects of the Sede Vacante: the populace’s assertion of freedom to do things normally proscribed during the Sede Plena (when the reigning pope was alive) and the limitations that the College of Cardinals faced in restraining the disorder as- sociated with the papal interregnum.3 This chapter will examine the little- studied matter of the governing power of the College of Cardinals during the Sede Vacante. With the papacy’s definitive return to Rome in 1420, after several decades of destabilization of the Great Schism, absolutist popes – in an evolu- tionary march towards centralization – sought to curtail the authority of the College of Cardinals. Once great princes of the Church who challenged the popes for leadership roles, by the late 16th century the cardinals had assumed mainly advisory roles within the papacy, serving as administrators in various congregations or as governors in the provinces of the Papal States.4 However,

1 asf, Mediceo del Principato, Lettere di Particolari, f. 822, letter of 30 September 1590 from Domenico Grimaldi, Archbishop of Avignon, to the Grand Duke Ferdinand, fol. 30r. 2 bav, Urb. lat. 1058, Avvisi di 1590, newsletter of 17 October 1590, fols. 535r-v. 3 On this violence and the freedom of Sede Vacante, see John M. Hunt, The Vacant See in Early Modern Rome: A Social History of the Papal Interregnum (Leiden: 2016), 132–73. 4 Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince. One Body and Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, trans. Susan Hawkins (Cambridge, Eng.: 1987), 17–58. See also Mario Caravale and

Cardinals and the Vacant See 323 the Sede Vacante brought new opportunities for the cardinals to exercise authority over the Curia, Rome, and the Papal States since they served as substi- tutes for the dead pontiff as interregnal leaders of the Church. The most press- ing task was the ability to elect the new Vicar of Christ, an awesome power that gave the cardinals the potential to shape the tone of the next pontificate. More- over, the cardinals also had the authority to govern the lands of the Church, including Rome and provincial capitals. Tradition, codified in several bulls be- ginning with Ubi periculum (1274) accorded the cardinals this faculty but also strictly limited their governmental authority as an independent body.5 These restrictions, coupled with the fact that the cardinals were sealed in the conclave, hampered their ability to direct the affairs of the Papal Sates, thus exac- erbating the inherently chaotic period of the interregnum. Although much has been written on the conclave, and more recently, on the Sede Vacante and its concomitant turmoil, there has been little comprehensive research dealing directly with the governmental power of the cardinals during the papal interregnum.6 Lorenzo Spinelli was the first modern scholar to ad- dress the issue in his monograph on papal bulls from Ne Romani (1312) to In eligendis (1562), which regulated both access to the conclave and the authority of the cardinals. Spinelli outlined the impact of these bulls, tracing an evolu- tion to an increasing loss of governing clout on the part of the cardinals.7 In separate studies, both Laurie Nussdorfer and I have examined the jurisdiction- al conflicts between the Sacred College and the civic regime of Rome (the Popolo Romano) over the city’s regulation.8 In his survey of the papal elections from 1450 to 1700, Miles Pattenden has summarized this literature and added his own insights, notably that the cardinals acted with their own self-interests in mind, frequently placing these over good government and often prolonging the election.9 While this research has contributed to a deeper understanding

Alberto Caracciolo, Lo Stato pontificio da Martino v a Pio x (Turin: 1978), 383–87. For the chal- lenge of the cardinals at the papacy’s return to Rome, see Carol M. Richardson, Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: 2009). 5 Luigi Tomassetti et al. (eds.), Bullarium Romanum: Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorim sanctorum romanorum pontificum (Turin: 1862), 4:37–38. 6 See Laurie Nussdorfer, “The Vacant See: Ritual and Protest in Early Modern Rome,” The Six- teenth Century Journal 18 (1987), 173–89; Hunt, The Vacant See; Maria Antonietta Visceglia, Morte e elezione del papa: Norme, riti e conflitti. L’Età moderna (Rome: 2013); and Joëlle Rollo- Koster, Raiding Saint Peter: Empty Sees, Violence, and the Initiation of the Great Western Schism, 1378 (Leiden: 2008). 7 Lorenzo Spinelli, La vacanza della Sede apostolica dalle origini al Concilio tridentino (Milan: 1955). 8 Nussdorfer, “The Vacant See,” and Hunt, The Vacant See, 32–46 and 50–60. 9 Miles Pattenden, Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450–1700 (Oxford: 2017).