When was the longest conclave

August As the long hot Italian summer draws to its close, so does the life of a rigidly orthodox and profoundly unpopular pope.

The harshly repressive papacy of Paul IV has seen the establishing of the Roman Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited Books, an unbending refusal to open dialogue with Protestants, and the ghettoization of Rome's Jews.

Making meticulous use of the detailed accounts left by Ippolito d'Este, one of the participating cardinals and the son of Lucrezia Borgia , Mary Hollingsworth relates the intrigue and double-dealing of the different parties trying to secure the required number of votes over the four months of this lengthiest of sixteenth-century papal elections.

Praise for The Medici : 'An excellent study of the Medici The longest conclave in history! Monsignor Charles Burns, a retired archivist at the Secret Vatican Archives, added, "The people of Viterbo were so annoyed by this, they said, "OK, we are going to close the cardinals in.

Even then, Ciuco said, the cardinals still could not decide. So villagers tried to starve them out. Eventually, they even tore the roof off the building. The two popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome, both claimed to be the true leader of the church, going so far as to excommunicate each other.

A council held in Pisa in sought to bridge the divide, but it only succeeded in adding a third pope to the mix. Finally, at the Council of Constance in what is now Germany, all three popes either resigned or were deposed. The Western Schism, as this fiasco became known, ended with the election of Martin V in Since the end of the Western Schism, the conclave has taken place in Rome every time but once.

The exception occurred in following the death of Pius VI, who had been taken prisoner during the French Revolution and exiled to France. Getting to the conclave used to be especially hard for American cardinals. Later U. There are only two requirements for becoming pope: being male and being baptized into the Catholic Church.