PAPAL ELECTIONS.
I.
The succession of the Roman pontiffs rests on the word of God; other lines of princes may fail, their line shall last until the end of the world. Still, although there will ever be a series of legitimate successors in the Papacy, the manner of succession has varied, being left to human prudence, which accommodates itself to times and places, yet ever under an overruling Providence that directs to its own ends no less the vices than the virtues of men.
The election of a pope is the most important event that takes place in the world. It affects immediately several hundred millions of Catholics in their dearest hopes of religion, and it touches indirectly the interests of all other people on the earth besides. In the pope the world receives a vicar of Christ, a successor of St. Peter, and an infallible judge in matters of faith and morals. The Papacy was always conferred regularly by way of election—from the chief of the apostles, chosen by our Lord himself, to Pius IX., now reigning, who was selected by the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church on the 17th of June, 1846. Between these there have been two hundred and sixty popes, if we follow the number given by the Gerarchia Cattolica, which is published annually at Rome.
On the 25th of July, 1876, our Holy Father, in a discourse to the students of the several colleges in Rome subject to the Propaganda, took occasion to speak quite earnestly of attempts that were being made in Italy to unsettle the minds of Catholics on papal elections by teaching that they were originally popular ones, and that the natural right of the laity in them (which, it was asserted, had been exercised without question for twelve hundred years) was arbitrarily and unlawfully taken away by Pope Alexander III. The errors of this new schismatical party may be reduced to two points—viz., that the share which the people were once usually allowed to take in the election of sacred ministers was a right and not a privilege accorded by the visible head of the church to ages of faith and fervor; and that Alexander III. deprived the Romans of this right in the election of their chief pastor.
Let us state, in the first place, that it is heretical to maintain that the laity have a strict—i.e., inherent or divine—right to elect their pastors, and historically false to assert that such a right was ever allowed by the rulers of the church or was ever exercised by the Christian people. The authorities to confirm our statement are so numerous as to cause almost an embarras de richesses. Besides the great collections which are the common sources of ecclesiastical erudition—the Fathers, the councils, annals, papal bulls; the Bollandists, and particularly, as regards papal elections, the Propylæum ad septem tomos Maji; the works of Thomassin, Gretser, Bellarmine, and others—we may cite here Selvaggio’s Antiquitatum Christianarum Institutiones, lib. i. par. i. cap. xxi.; Mamacchi’s Origines et Antiquitates Christianæ, tom. iv. lib. iv.; and Colenzio’s Dissertationi intorno varie Controversie di Storia ed Archeologia Ecclesiastica, diss. vi. Del preteso dritto del popolo cristiano nell’ clezione dei Sacri Ministri.
The earliest manner of electing the popes was by the votes of the Roman clergy cast in the presence of the faithful, who assisted as witnesses to the godliness of the subject proposed, and to testify that besides his personal merits he was an acceptable person on account, perhaps, of his birth, his nationality, his appearance, or of some other adventitious circumstance which enhanced his popularity with the great body of the people, and would cause him, also, to be looked upon with less disfavor by them who are without.[[114]] Although these elections belonged to the clergy and laity of the Roman Church—or we should say, rather, to the higher clergy and the representatives of the laity—the relative rights or parts of each class of electors were not apparently determined by express enactment, but upon grounds of common sense and equity; such, for instance, as that Episcopus deligatur, plebe præsente, quæ singulorum vitam plenissime norit, et uniuscujusque actum de ejus conversatione prospexit,[[115]] or that Nullus invitis detur episcopus.[[116]] Bellarmine,[[117]] Sixtus Senensis,[[118]] Petrus de Marca,[[119]] and Thomassin[[120]] prove that the people’s part in such elections was more perfunctory than real, since testimony of a man’s good repute could be otherwise obtained, and that even an expression of preference was not always heeded; as we learn from the same Pope Celestine, who wrote to the bishops of Apulia and Calabria: Docendus est populus, non sequendus; nosque si nesciunt, eosquid liceat quidve non liceat, commonere non his consensum præbere debemus.[[121]] The Roman people, then, did not and could not have, except by usurpation and abuse, a decisive voice in the election of the pope; for such an act is by God’s ordinance placed beyond the jurisdiction of the laity.
After the martyrdom of St. Fabian, in January, A.D. 250, the Holy See remained vacant for a year and a half, until in the month of June, 251, Cornelius was raised to that post of perilous dignity under a tyrant like Decius, who had declared that he would sooner see a new pretender to the empire than another bishop of Rome. This election, although made almost unanimously by all orders, gave rise to the first schism, because Novatian, who headed the rigorous party in the affair of the Lapsi, was consecrated bishop and set himself up as anti-pope. We have an invaluable testimony to the election of St. Cornelius from the pen of St. Cyprian: Factus est autem Cornelius episcopus de Dei et Christi ejus judicio, de clericorum pæne omnium testimonio, de plebis, quæ tunc adfuit, suffragio et de sacerdotum antiquorum et bonorum virorum collegio, cum nemo ante se factus esset, cum Fabiani locus id est cum locus Petri et gradus cathedræ sacerdotalis vacaret.[[122]] From this passage of the great Bishop of Carthage we can obtain, says Baronius,[[123]] a tolerably good idea of a papal election in the early ages. Prayers were first offered up to God to obtain his assistance in making a choice; the desire of the faithful, or rather of their representatives, and such testimony to the worth of the subjects proposed as they were prepared to give was heard; the wish of the Roman clergy, and their willing assent to the proceedings, were inquired into and sought; and after maturely weighing the for and against, the bishops of the vicinity, with any others in communion with the Holy See who happened to be in Rome at the time, went into executive session and gave the decisive votes—in commitiis suffragia ferebant. With regard to those among the laity who took part in these elections, we must observe that in the beginning, as long as the majority of Christians was composed of persons who had embraced the faith from pure and unworldly motives, whose aim was to behold the church prosperous and glorious, and whose charity, being yet warm, sought not their own end but that which is another’s,[[124]] the whole body of Christians who had reached mature years and belonged to that sex which alone had a voice in the church[[125]] gave their testimony and assent in favor of that one whom it was proposed to elect;[[126]] but the evils of anything like a popular election in a great city were so manifest[[127]] that attempts were soon made to leave the choice of such on the part both of clergy and laity—but earlier in the case of the latter order—to a select body or committee, a general suffrage being gradually superseded by the votes of approval given by the rich only and the high in station.
We find, perhaps, a germ of this even in the earliest times.[[128]] The Council of Laodicea (A.D. 365) clearly desired that the choice should be made by some definitely-organized body, and not by a mere mass-meeting; St. Leo and the Roman council of A.D. 442, and again the former in Epist. lxxxix.cvi., expressly mention the “Honorati,” the magnates at such elections.[[129]] The influence of the principal personages in a city was not to be ignored through the clamor of those who too often formed only a mob.[[130]] A letter of Pope Cornelius to Fabius, Bishop of Antioch, has fortunately been preserved by Eusebius,[[131]] which gives us the exact number of the Roman clergy of every grade, and a clue[[132]] to what may have been the Christian population of Rome, in the middle of the third century. According to these precious statistics, there were then belonging to the Roman clergy 46 priests, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists, readers, and ostiarii. Fifteen hundred widows and orphans were provided for by the church, whose children composed an immense population in the capital of the empire. Hence we may rest assured that deliberations for the election of the Roman pontiff could not have been open to all of either clergy or laity, but must necessarily, in the interests of good order, and by reason of the small size of places of public meetings then possessed by the Christians, have been confined to a select number.
The ancient records of the Roman Church reaching back to the beginning of the early middle ages, which have been published by Mabillon and Galletti, show us its clergy divided into three distinct classes—viz., priests, dignitaries, and inferior ministers. The priests were the seven cardinal suburbican bishops and the twenty-eight cardinal-priests; the dignitaries were the archdeacon and the seven palatine judges (prothonotaries-apostolic); the inferior ministers were the subdeacons, acolytes, and notaries without office at court. The laity was likewise divided into three classes—viz., citizens, soldiers, and commoners; i.e., the nobility, the army, and the Third Estate.[[133]]
After the death of Pope Zozimus, on the 26th of December, 418, a majority of the clergy and people elected the cardinal-priest Boniface to succeed him. A serious dispute immediately arose. Eulalius, the archdeacon, who, as such, had been practically the most important personage of the Holy See after the pontiff himself, and felt indignant at having been passed over in the election, held possession of the Lateran Palace, where he was chosen pope by a few of the clergy, to whose faction, however, all the deacons and three bishops belonged.[[134]] The fear of future contests suggested to Pope Boniface I., who is described by Anastasius as unambitious, of mild character; and devoted to good works, to obtain from the Emperor Honorius, in the year 420, a rescript by which it was decreed that, in the contingency of a double election, neither rival should be pope, but that the clergy and people should proceed to another choice. The decree was almost textually inserted in the canon law.[[135]] This difference between St. Boniface and Eulalius, or rather the latter’s schism, gave occasion to the first interference of the secular arm in the election of the Roman pontiffs. St. Hilary, who was elected in the year 461, convened a council of forty-eight bishops at Rome, and, among other provisions for filling worthily the Holy See, declared that no pope should ever appoint his own successor. Despite this recent enactment, Boniface II.—in whose favor, however, it must be said that he sought to preclude, as even a greater evil than a passing violation of the canons, the threatened interference of the Gothic king, who wanted to put a partisan on the papal throne—called a council at St. Peter’s in the year 531, and there designated the celebrated deacon Vigilius as his coadjutor with future succession. Subsequently, repenting his action, he called another council, and with his own hand burned the paper appointing him.[[136]]
Although the actual naming of his successor by the pope has never been tolerated, there have been several, and some very opportune, cases in which a pope on the point of death has recommended a particular person, more or less efficaciously, to the body of electors as one well fitted to succeed to the vacant throne. This was done by St. Gregory VII., who proposed three candidates to the cardinals—namely, Desiderius, Cardinal-Abbot of Monte Casino; Otho, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia; and Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons—and particularly recommended the election of the first as the only one of the three who was in Italy at the time. Desiderius became Pope Victor III. Other similar, but not always equally successful, recommendations were made by popes of that era. In order finally to put the strongest official check upon the election of his own successor by a pope, Pius IV., after exposing in consistory his age and infirmities, reminded the cardinals that he was well aware how under his predecessor, Paul IV., the question was mooted whether this could be done, and that some theologians and cardinals held to the affirmative,[[137]] but that he would pronounce in the negative, and intended to issue a bull—as in fact he did, on the 22d of September, 1561[[138]]—declaring that no pope could do so, even with the consent of the Sacred College. His immediate predecessor had reaffirmed in 1558 an ordinance increasing the penalties of its violation, which had originally been passed over a thousand years before by Pope Symmachus in a council of seventy-two bishops convened at Rome in the year 499, forbidding, under pain of excommunication and loss of all dignities, to treat of a successor during the lifetime of the reigning pontiff.[[139]] From this we learn how some of the best and greatest popes have tried to frame such wise provisions as might assure an untainted election to the Papacy; yet they could not succeed in every case, because even the most stringent laws must be well executed to be effective, and must find docile subjects to obey them. The Romans do certainly appear to have been a stiff-necked people during many generations; and while we think it ungenerous continually to throw in their teeth the wretched opinion St. Bernard must have had of them, as we see by his treatise De Consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugene III., and hardly fair in the annalist Muratori to transfer so much of the blame for factious elections from the German emperors to the Roman populace, the least that even their best friend can honestly say is that they might have done better.[[140]]
The election of the pope, says Cardinal Borgia,[[141]] was perfectly free during the first four centuries, being made by the clergy in presence of the people; but in process of time, as the papal dignity increased in wealth and splendor of temporal authority, it often became an object of human ambition, of which secular rulers were not slow to avail themselves, that by iniquitous bargains and preconcerted plans they might bind, if possible, the priesthood to the empire, and derive the immense advantage of the spiritual power administered by a subject or a dependant. The first instance of direct interference by the state in a papal election—for the decision in the case of Boniface and the anti-pope was an arbitration invited by the church—appears towards the close of the fifth century. Odoacer, a Gothic chief of the tribe of the Heruli, having deposed Romulus Augustulus, in whom the Western Empire came to an end, was proclaimed King of Italy, rejecting the imperial style of Cæsar and Augustus for a title which he expressly created for himself. It would seem—although even this is not beyond dispute—that Pope Simplicius had requested Odoacer, in whom the powers of the state were now vested, to stand ready, in the common interests of order and good government, to repress the civil commotions which he foresaw were likely to arise after his death on the election of a successor. However this may be, the king went beyond a merely repressive measure, and, pretending that Simplicius had commissioned him to do so, published an edict on the pope’s death in 483, forbidding the clergy and people of Rome to elect a successor without his intervention or that of his lieutenant, the prefect of the prætorium. When, therefore, the elective assembly met in St. Peter’s to fill the vacant see, Basil the patrician came forward and claimed in his master’s name, and by virtue of the dying wish and even command of Simplicius, the right of regulating its acts and of confirming the election it might make. This pretension was firmly repelled, and, disregarding the tyrant, Felix III. was elected on March 8, 483. Baronius is of opinion that Simplicius never addressed such a requisition to the king, but that the story of his having done so was fabricated a few years later by the party of Lawrence, the anti-pope. The document purporting to emanate from Simplicius was rejected by a Roman council in 502 without further investigating its genuineness, than by exposing that it lacked the pope’s signature, and was in any case opposed to the sacred canons and ipso facto null and void.[[142]] On November 22, 498, St. Symmachus was elected pope, but a minority set up a certain Lawrence, and both were consecrated on the same day. Civil strife was imminent, and, although the most regular mode of action would have been to call a council of the provincial bishops, delay was too dangerous, and the prompt interference of Theodoric was asked and submitted to.
Although this monarch was an Arian, he had protected the Catholics on many occasions, and had for prime minister the celebrated Cassiodorus, whose virtues, justice, and wisdom were renowned throughout Italy. Such considerations as these must have led the Roman clergy to submit a purely ecclesiastical matter to the court of Ravenna. On the advice of his minister the king decided that the one who had been first elected and had received the greatest number of votes should be recognized as the legitimate pope. Both conditions were verified in Symmachus. His first pontifical act was to summon a council in the basilica of St. Peter on March 1, 499, to regulate more effectively the mode of future elections. Seventy-two bishops, sixty-seven priests, and five deacons composed the council. Three canons were drawn up relative to this matter. By the first it was ordained that if any clergyman be convicted of having given or promised his suffrage for the pontificate to any aspirant during the pope’s lifetime he shall be deposed from his office; by the second it was provided that if the pope die suddenly, and a unanimous election cannot be reached, the candidate receiving a majority of the votes shall be declared elected; by the third immunity from prosecution was promised to accomplices who should reveal the intrigues of their principals to obtain an unfair election.[[143]]
Theodoric the Goth, having once been appealed to, now thought to take the initiative in the election of a successor to John I., whom he had left to die of starvation and neglect on his return from Constantinople, where he had spoken rather according to his conscience than in favor of the Arians, as the king expected. On his recommendation St. Felix IV. was elected pope on the 12th of July, 526. The Roman clergy and senate protested against this stretch of royal authority, although they had no objection to the nominee, who was simple, mild, and charitable. The affair was not adjusted until a compromise was effected under Athalaric, whereby the Roman clergy by their votes, and the Roman people by their assent, were to elect the Roman pontiff, who would then be confirmed by the king as a matter of course. The popes were elected in this way until the extinction of the Gothic kingdom of Italy in the person of Teias, who was defeated and killed by Narses, general of Justinian, in the year 553. The Greek emperor, having recovered his sway in Italy, continued the abuse, to which the Romans had submitted only through fear of the barbarians, and arrogated to himself and successors the right of confirming the election of the pope. Hence, as Baronius remarks, arose the prudent custom at Rome of electing to the Papacy those members of the clergy who had been Apocrisiarii—i.e., agents or nuncios of the Holy See at Constantinople, where it was presumed they had won the favor of the court and become versed in matters of state. Thus the right of confirmation was reduced in practice to a mere formality, although in principle ever so wrong. In this way were elected Vigilius in 550, St. Gregory I. in 590, Sabinian in 604, Boniface III. in 607, and others who were personally known to the Byzantine rulers.
Avarice, or a love of money under some pretext or another, was a besetting sin of the Greeks, and from it arose a new and more degrading condition imposed on papal elections. The imperial sanction was given only on payment by the Holy See of a tax of 3,000 golden solidi, a sum equal to thirteen thousand dollars of our money.[[144]] The Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, at the request of the papal legates to the Fourth General Council of Constantinople in 681, exempted the Holy See from the further payment of the tax. He was moved to do so by the sanctity of St. Agatho; but he still retained the assumed right of forbidding the pope’s consecration until his election had been confirmed. A few years later, however, he granted a constitution to Benedict II., his personal friend, and to whose guardianship he left his two sons, Justinian (II.) and Heraclius, in which he for ever abrogated this arbitrary law. The concession was ungratefully revoked by Justinian; and Conon, who was elected on October 21, 686, was obliged to ask the consent of the exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the emperor, to his consecration. This necessity generally occasioned a delay of from six weeks to two months. The exarchs of Ravenna, having command of the troops and the key to the imperial treasury in the west, felt themselves in a position to abuse authority and try to set up creatures of their own in Rome. Often did the Roman clergy and many popes protest against their irregular acts. The choice of Pelagius II., in 578, was not submitted to the customary ratification, because the Lombards around Rome had cut off all communication with the outer world.
The historian Novaes says that although the Holy See resisted the interference of secular princes, yet the turbulent spirit of the Romans, often stirred up by unscrupulous ministers or by the sovereigns themselves, obliged the popes to have recourse to these same princes to maintain order at their consecration. Nothing, we think, better confirms the necessity of a temporal dominion whereby the popes can exclude the exercise of foreign influence in Rome, and themselves vindicate the character of good government for which they are responsible. Papal elections were of an absolutely peaceful nature only after Goths, Lombards, Greeks, and Germans ceased to support an armed force in Rome or its vicinity. Guarantees are deceitful; and a mere personal sovereignty of the pope without a territory attached would be insufficient to assure the independence of the Holy See.
A very remarkable law found its way into Gratian’s decree, under the name of Pope Stephen, by which it is ordained that the newly-elected pontiff shall be consecrated in presence of the imperial ambassadors.[[145]] The learned are divided in their opinion about which pope passed this law. Baronius, Papebroch, Natalis Alexander, and others attribute it to Stephen IV., elected in 816; Pagi inclines to Stephen VI., alias VII.; Mansi to Deusdedit, elected in 615; while some think that it belongs to John IX., because it is found among the acts of a council held by him in 898. Novaes suggests that this council may only have given a more solemn sanction to an older law. When Eugene II. was elected on the 5th of June, 824, he concerted with Lothair, son of the Emperor Louis, who had named him King of Italy and his colleague in the empire, to put a stop to cabals and disorders among the Roman people. He issued a decree enjoining upon the Roman clergy to swear fealty to the Frankish emperors, but with this significant reservation: “saving the faith that I have pledged to the successor of St. Peter”—Salva fide quam repromisi Domino Apostolico[[146]]—and not to consent to an uncanonical or factious election of a pope. The same pope also voluntarily offered to bind the Roman pontiffs to be consecrated in the presence of the so-called Rex Romanorum, if he were in the city, otherwise of his envoy.[[147]] Pagi thinks that this was done to propitiate in advance these growing monarchs of the north, and distract them from the idea of continuing the policy of the Eastern emperors, who, as we have seen, would not allow the popes to proceed to consecration until their election had been confirmed. Eugene’s act seems to us to have been a subtle stroke of diplomacy. While it flattered, by conveying the impression that the presence of Cæsar (as he was pompously called) or of his legates gave splendor and magnificence to the ceremony of consecration, it disarmed the emperor by implying the right of the popes to be consecrated at their own convenience; for if his meaning had been that the presence of the king or of his ambassadors were a necessary condition to the legality of the act, he would have deliberately placed himself and successors in the same relation to these new rulers that his predecessors had been obliged, though under protest, to assume toward the emperors of the East—which is manifestly absurd.
Nevertheless, both the Frank and Saxon emperors frequently claimed the right to something more than a mere honorary part in papal elections, which led to long years of party strife and discord between church and state. Leo IV., in 847, confirmed the decree of Eugene, although, on account of the Saracens around Rome, he was consecrated without waiting for the imperial ambassadors; and the same was the case, but without any ostensible reason, with Stephen V., alias VI. This shows that the presence of the envoys was an honorary privilege, which conferred no authority to go back of or revise the election itself, as Hadrian III., Stephen’s immediate predecessor, expressly affirmed in a decree given by Martinus Polonus,[[148]] Mabillon,[[149]] and Pagi.[[150]]
It is but fair to confess that this decree is not considered authentic by all; but what historical document has not been called in question by some hypercritic or other, especially in Germany? That it is not apocryphal is shown by the fact that one of Hadrian’s successors—John IX., elected in 898—annulled it in view of the peace ensured by the presence of the ambassadors, and restored the earlier ordinance of Eugene.
The text of the canon law, and especially the passage Canonico ritu et consuetudine, has been often appealed to by Cæsarists and Protestant historians, as though it demonstrated that a papal election not made according to its requirements was uncanonical and invalid. In the first place, Cardinal Garampi[[151]] remarks that Eugene’s decree was a personal privilege Advocatiæ given to the princes of the Carlovingian line; and in the second place Thomassin observes upon John’s decree[[152]] that the imperial ambassadors were not admitted to the election, but only to the subsequent consecration; that they were there to overawe the turbulent; and that in time their presence became a custom and was looked on as a part, so to speak, of the external rite of consecration. It had, besides, become so useful as a repressive measure against the enemies of the Holy See that it received the high sanction of being countenanced by the canon law itself. Pope Nicholas II., in the eleventh century, explained the text Quia Sancta in the same sense. It must be said, to the discredit of the Othos and the Henrys, that they too often slipped from the inch of privilege to the ell of (pretended) right, and went so far as to interfere in a direct and absolute sense at papal elections, intruding some less worthy subjects into the Papacy; but when once these occupied the seat of Peter they were to be recognized and respected on the same principle that the high-priests were in the irregular age of the Seleucidæ and the Romans when they sat upon the chair of Moses. Yet even the imperial influence, says Kenrick,[[153]] was beneficially exercised in several instances, particularly those of Clement II. and St. Leo IX. Dr. Constantine Höfler has written a work[[154]] replete with information about the German popes and the physical aspect, the morals, manners, and customs of the Romans in their time. Charles Hemans’ books (we cannot seriously call them works) on Ancient and Mediæval Christianity and Sacred Art in Italy, while they show considerable acquaintance with the best authorities on the subject, manifest a detestable animus against the Holy See, which shows their writer to be as great an adept in the “art of putting things” as the far more learned author of the eight-volume History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, Ferdinand Gregorovius. While the corruption of some popes and the depravity of the tenth century have been exaggerated by many historians, the condition of the Papacy at that time is certainly a warning against the interference of secular princes in the elections; for, as the great Baronius remarks (ad an. 900), Nihil penitus Ecclesiæ Romanæ contingere potest funestius, tetrius nihil atque lugubrius, quam si principes seculares in Romanorum Pontificum electiones manus immittant.[[155]]
In the middle of the eleventh century a movement was begun to reform the method of conducting papal elections, which eventually limited them within the legitimate circle of ecclesiastical prerogatives, totally excluding the direct influence of the inferior clergy and the aristocratic and popular element of the laity. Pope Nicholas II., having assembled a synod of one hundred and thirteen bishops in the Lateran Palace in the month of April, 1059, passed a law to the following effect: On the death of the pope the cardinal-bishops shall first meet in council and with the utmost diligence treat of a successor; they shall next take joint action with the cardinal-priests, and finally consider the wishes of the rest of the clergy and of the Roman people. If a worthy subject can be found among the members of the Roman (higher) clergy itself, he is to be preferred, otherwise a foreigner shall be elected; so that, however, the honor and regard due to our beloved son Henry, now king, and soon, God grant, to be emperor, which we have seen proper to show to him and to his successors who may personally apply for it, be not diminished. If a proper election cannot take place in Rome, it may be held anywhere else.[[156]] In the year 1061 another synod was held, in which it was distinctly stated that the mere fact of election in the foregoing manner placed the elect in possession of plenary apostolic authority; consequently, the emperor’s confirmation was excluded, in the sense that without it the election was invalid. From this period, although the struggle was not yet over, the Papacy was completely emancipated from any kind of subjection to the empire. Alexander II., successor to Nicholas, did not communicate his election to the court; and although St. Gregory VII., glorious Hildebrand, did do so, it was partly from prudence in view of the excitement in Germany occasioned by the setting up of the anti-pope Cadolaus in resentment for his predecessor’s neglect, and partly from his sense of honor, lest it should be thought (since he had taken a principal part in enacting the statute of Pope Nicholas) that he availed himself of an advantage which he had himself created—artfully, as suspicious-minded persons might think—in anticipation of one day ascending the papal chair. He was the last pope who ever informed the emperor of his election before proceeding to be consecrated and enthroned. The great Catholic powers still continue to exercise a measure of influence in these elections, but of a purely advisory character, except in the case of those few which enjoy the privilege of veto, or the esclusiva, as the Romans say. At the Third General Council of the Lateran, held in the year 1179 by Alexander III., a most important advance was made in the manner of holding the elections. The right of the cardinals to elect, without reference to the rest of the Roman clergy or of the people, was affirmed, and a majority of two-thirds of their votes required for a valid election. This law was readily approved by the bishops and members of the council, and incorporated in the canon law, where it is found among the decretals of Gregory IX.[[157]]