1830–1831 conclave
election of Pope Gregory XVI
A conclave was held from 14 December 1830 to 2 February 1831 to elect a new pope to succeed Pius VIII, who had died on 30 November. Of the 45 members of the College of Cardinals, all but nine attended. On the 83rd ballot, the conclave elected Cardinal Bartolomeo Cappellari, the prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. After accepting his election, he took the name Gregory XVI.
Background
Pope Pius VIII died on Thursday, 30 November 1830, at the age of sixty-nine. On 11 December, Monsignor Benedetto Cappelletti, the governor of Rome, informed the cardinals that there was a conspiracy in Rome involving the Bonaparte nephews of Cardinal Joseph Fesch. One in custody had been released to the Russian minister, since his mother was the Russian-born Catharina of Württemberg. Fesch refused to ask his nephews to leave Rome. A paper bomb exploded under the windows of the conclave. The conclave thus opened in an atmosphere of high tension.
Description
When the conclave convened on 14 December, some 45 of the 54 living cardinals participated; eight of whom were not Italian.
The public source identifies “1830–1831 conclave” as election of Pope Gregory XVI. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around conclave, election and Pope.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2209841. Authority coordinates are 41.906, 12.456. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1830 and 1831.
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This entry incorporates text from “1830–1831 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.