That this method of choosing a supreme head of the universal Church was in its origin abusive—­that the earliest popes were chosen by the suffrages of the entire body of the faithful, that by a process of encroachment this election was in the course of time arrogated to themselves by the Roman clergy, and was ultimately, by a further process of similar encroachment, monopolized by the “Sacred College” of cardinals,—­all this is sufficiently well known.  It is, however, curious enough to merit a passing word, that a precisely analogous process of progressive encroachment may be observed to have taken place in the mode of appointing the bishops of the Church, not only in the Catholic, but also in the Protestant branch of it.  First freely elected by the body of the faithful, they were subsequently chosen by the clergy, and lastly by a small and select body of these in the form of a “chapter.”  Only in this case a further step of encroachment being still possible, that step has been made; and bishops are nominated in the Catholic Church formally, and in the Anglican really, by the pope and the sovereign respectively.

It does not seem that in the earliest elections made by the cardinals the precautions of a “conclave,” or a shutting up together of the cardinals, was adopted.  The first conclave seems to have been that which elected Innocent IV. in 1243, and the motive for the locking up appears to have been the fear of interference by the emperor Frederick, who was at the time ravaging all the country around Rome.  The first conclave that was guarded by a Savelli, in whose family the office of marshal of the Church and guardian of the conclaves became hereditary, was that which elected Nicholas IV. in 1288.  The mode in which this pontiff merited his elevation is worth telling, apropos of conclaves.  The conclave had lasted over ten months, and been prolonged into the hottest and most unhealthy season, insomuch that six cardinals died, many more fell ill, and all ran away save one, the bishop of Palestrina.  He, “keeping large fires continually burning to correct the air,” stuck to it, remained in conclave all alone, and was unanimously elected pope at the return of the cardinals when the pestilence had ceased.  In 1270 we find a conclave sitting under difficulties of another kind.  It was at Viterbo, and their Eminences sat for two years without making any election; whereupon, we are told, Raniero Gatti, the captain of the city, took the step of unroofing the palace in which they were assembled as a means of hastening their decision.  That their Eminences were not thus to be hurried, however, is proved by their having subsequently dated a bull, still to be seen with its seventeen seals, “from the unroofed episcopal palace of Viterbo.”  There were four or five popes elected subsequently to this, however, without conclaves; but from the death of Boniface VIII. in 1303 the series of conclaves has been unbroken.  Celestine V., who abdicated in 1294, drew up the rules which, confirmed by his successor, Boniface VIII., and by many subsequent popes from time to time down to the last century, still regulate the assembling and holding of the conclave, modified in some degree, as regards the food and private comforts of the cardinals, by indulgence of later pontiffs.