1389 conclave
election of Pope Boniface IX

The 1389 conclave (25 October – 2 November) was convoked after the death of Pope Urban VI. The conclave is historically unique because all of the cardinal electors were the creation of a single pontiff: Urban VI, the very pope who was being replaced. None of the surviving cardinals created by previous popes recognized Urban VI as legitimate (see: Western Schism). In addition, Urban VI had deposed four of his creatures, and three were absent, leaving only sixteen cardinal electors.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1389 conclave” is election of Pope Boniface IX. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through conclave, election and Pope, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1781736. Authority coordinates are 41.904, 12.456. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1389.
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This entry incorporates text from “1389 conclave” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.