Tim Pendry's Reviews > Conclave 1559: Ippolito d'Este and the Papal Election of 1559

Mary Hollingsworth has delivered an 'insider' account of the Papal Conclave of 1559 through the eyes of the aristocratic Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, leader of the French faction that contested for the prize of appointing the next Pope with both the pro-Spaniards and the Italians linked to Paul IV.

The late Paul IV was unpopular and had run a repressive and vicious administration so Romans were waiting for something better. The fact that it took so long (nearly four months) to 'cut a deal' is one of the things that makes this Conclave so interesting.

Her sources are d'Este's papers, above all his account books (over 200) and letters (over 2,000). We have a blow by blow account of the micro-politics of the Papacy where two thirds of the vote of well over 50 Cardinals would decide the tone and fate of Catholic Christianity as well as of Northern Italy.

And what a rum lot these cardinals are, nearly all about as spiritual as a conclave of gangsters in interwar Chicago - competitive, manipulative, ostentatious, greedy and often deeply unpleasant, with one of their number in the job as a teenage jobsworth yet it kept elite wheels turning.

There is also the phenomenon of the cardinal-nephew for us to cope with. Each Pope would make new cardinals out of his relatives (this was accepted as due to the 'family') and these would make a 'dead weight' mini-faction in the Conclave. The practice was only ended finally in the 1690s.

We see the lack of dignity and squalor of the election as it unfolded beneath Michelangelo's Last Judgement and the other great works in the Apostolic Palace. We also see the frustration of the Papal Master of Ceremonies [Firmano] as his instructions were ignored and chaos ensued.

This is Namier-type history with personal interests triumphing over anything much greater. The overwhelming impression here is of Firmano trying to herd cats as the cardinals and their hangers-on behaved like naughty fourth formers in a boarding school straight out of St. Trinians.

Sometimes the complex negotiations in the election can be hard to follow. The author also rather likes the minutiae of clerical expenditures. Hollingsworth has introduced an odd 'tic' by which almost exactly the same balance of factions is repeated at the head of her account of key days.

But these are small complaints to set against the readability of the story and the clarity she provides about political life at the beating heart of a still fundamentally medieval Catholicism, Renaissance culture notwithstanding.

There was a lot at stake here because, once appointed, the Pope was an absolute autocrat with his hands on a great deal of patronage for the major noble families of Italy and huge influence over the tone and direction of continental foreign policy in age of great power rivalry.

There is an equally important ideological sub-text insofar as Protestantism had arisen as a threat over the previous forty years or so. Cardinals would have different responses to the challenge - reformist-accommodating, hard-line or simply uninterested and pragmatic.

Who became Pope therefore mattered at multiple levels - in relation to accommodation with princely Protestantism or not, in advantage for Spain or France in Italy, for Church reform and credibility, for noble houses in Italy, for the peace of mind of the Romans themselves and for their quality of life.

The two Great Powers attempting to influence the election were the superpower of Habsburg Spain and its weakening rival Valois France with the three main factions in the Conclave attempting every possible dirty trick to protect their interests. As a result, you have quite a story.

Although not in the top ten longest conclaves in Papal history, it was, at well over three and a half months, the longest in the sixteenth century because of the sheer difficulty of getting the two thirds majority amidst the gross interference of the outside powers and desperate greed of some families

In the end a Medici was elected as Pius IV. He was not a bad choice as a reasonably sensible and moderate candidate who helped clean up some of the corruption and who resumed the slow-burning reforming Council of Trent which had initiated the Counter-Reformation.

Ippolito d'Este, clearly highly regarded and influential, risked his own wealth to get through a Conclave where one speculated to accumulate, hoping that the right choice would deliver greater benefits and so recovery of funds. This was simple entrepreneurialism.

Others gambled and lost with the downright evil Neapolitan Carafa family suffering most. 1561 saw the execution of the Cardinal (a cruel and licentious gay bandit and murderer) and his brother (wife murderer and gangster) in 1561.

These Cardinals are mostly an unprepossessing lot. Some were honest. Most were not stupid. A very few were what we might understand as moral in the sense that the Church teaches morality. The rest were mostly opportunistic equivalents of our billionaires or aristocratic thugs, sometimes both.

Still, as the mafia say, that was then and this is now. The Conclave was a hinge point after which the Church begins the slow process of reform - simony was not outlawed until the 1690s - if only because of a growing understanding that Protestantism arose because of its own Italianate excesses.

There is a coda to the main story as d'Este (who had inherited the Archbishopric of Milan at the age of 10) becomes Cardinal-Protector of France just as that country stumbles its way into the first of its eight wars of religion. There are some interesting perspectives here. He died in 1572.

D'Este, an undoubtedly highly intelligent statesman and diplomat, was not untypical of his time - an aristocrat destined for the Church from a very early age and seeing preferment as a means to wealth and the protection of the family interest and its alliances.

Despite the complexity of the negotiations, the book is highly readable. The author is good at revealing character - especially important in dealing with the somewhat inept and pushy Spanish Ambassador Francisco de Vargas and the increasingly desperate Cardinal Carlo Carafa.

The double-dealing is sometimes quite fun to observe. The reputation of sixteenth century Italy is done no favours. We have ground for judging its church nobility as just a classy form of sustained criminality. Still, the seeds of something better were sown in 1559.