1268–1271 papal election
papal election (1268–1271)
The papal election that followed the death of Pope Clement IV lasted from 1 December 1268 to 1 September 1271 and was the longest in the history of the Catholic Church. This was due primarily to political infighting between the cardinals. The election of Teobaldo Visconti as Pope Gregory X was the first example of a papal election by "compromise", that is, by the appointment of a committee of six cardinals agreed to by the other ten. (This method was attempted once before, in the 1227 papal election, but the choice of the committee refused the honor and the full group of cardinals proceeded to elect the pope.) The election occurred more than a year after the magistrates of Viterbo locked the cardinals in, reduced their rations to bread and water, and removed the roof of the Palace of the Popes in Viterbo where the election took place.
As a result of the length of the election, during which three of the twenty cardinal-electors died and one resigned, Gregory X promulgated the papal bull Ubi periculum on 7 July 1274, during the Second Council of Lyon, establishing the papal conclave, whose rules were based on the tactics employed against the cardinals in Viterbo. The first election held under those rules is sometimes viewed as the first conclave.
Cardinal electors
The dynamic of the conclave was divided between the French Angevin cardinals, mostly created by Pope Urban IV, who were amenable to an invasion of Italy by Charles of Anjou, and the non-French (mostly Italian) cardinals whose numbers were just sufficient to prevent a French pope from being elected. Clement IV's crowning of Charles of Anjou as King of Naples and Sicily, previously a papal fief, had cemented the influence of the French monarchy in the Italian peninsula and created an intense division within the College of Cardinals between those who opposed and supported French influence, and by extension, ultramontanism. Conradin, the last ruler of the House of Hohenstaufen, had been beheaded in Naples just a month before the death of Clement IV.
At the death of Clement IV there were twenty cardinals in the Sacred College. One cardinal (Rodolphe of Albano) was absent throughout and died during the vacancy.
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