As the cardinals vote for the next leader of the 1,400 million Catholics in the world, they face Miguel Ángel’s “trial” in the Sistine Chapel, a powerful work that may seem to monitor the solemn and heavy occasion. From the Sistine Chapel, Pope John Paul II wrote: “Everything is conducive to an awareness of the presence of God, in whose view one day will be judged.”
But the chapel has not always taken the official place for the papal conclave.
This year’s conclave is only 14 to be a hero inside the chapel, since the rules to choose a pontiff were written for the first time about 800 years ago, said Ralf Van Bühren, who teaches history of art at the pontifical University of Santa Croce in Rome.
The conclave was the first hero in the chapel in 1492. Then, for more than 300 years, we were held in different spaces in the Apostolic Palace, the papal residence. It was not until 1878 that the Church again began to celebrate the papal elections in the Sistine Chapel. And it did not become the official site for the conclave until 1996, when Pope John Paul II wrote new rules for papal elections, said Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican Museums.
In the first centuries of the Church, the popes were chosen by the acclamation, a kind of group voice vote, and the clergy and the population of Rome could be split. Little by little, the vote rights were restricted to the best ranges of the clergy, thought that the external interference of the monarchs and the aristocrats was common.
The longest conclave in history lasted 33 months, between November 29, 1268 and September 1, 1271. He promoted Gregory X, the pontiff that emerged from that election, to elaborate rules that were first used in 1276. These were adjusted to the years, reviewed by John Paul II, and touched by Benedict XVI.
The conclave comes from “cum key”, Latin to a key, and the cardinals remained kidnapped until a Pope was chosen. Small and accelerated cubicles were erected in the Sistine Chapel and the corridors and surrounding rooms. Each cardinal was allowed one or two assistants, he thought that since the space was Carce, the assistants were often forced to sleep in improvised lofts on the cubicles.
There were periods in history in which the cardinals were literally walled, along with a crew of attendees. The Vatican archives and museums have documents that refer to payments for some of the additional conclave teams: teachers of ceremonies, confessors, sacristanos, doctors, nurses and pharmacists.
“It was an entire world,” said Michela Gianfranschi, an official of the Vatican museums.
An official known as Mariscal de Conclave was the keys where the cardinals stayed and acted as their intermediary to the outside world while they remained kidnapped.
The newspapers of the FIT participants suggest that the papal arrangements were barely picnics. Around the centuries there are bone fires inside the hall. The fights exploded among the cardinals. The riots burst into the streets outside.
Mary Hollingsworth, in his book about the 1559 conclave, writes that the duration of the four months that led to the Pius IV election, “the living conditions in the Vatican had deteriorated dramatically: a cardinal died, many dying of the chapel of the lentlentlentlentl, where 21 of them had their cells, it was so bad that the area should be so bad that the area should be so bad fumigada “.
The choice of Urban VIII tok place duration three weeks in the summer of 1606, and contemporary documents say that the 55 cardinals involved suffered in the suffocating Roman heat. By the time they were released, 12 cardinals had a fever, two had to leave due to a disease and Thers were close to death. Even Urban had to postpone his choice ceremony because he was sick.
Some potatoes sought to find alternative spaces to house the cardinals, even above the colonnade in the Plaza de San Pedro, a plan that was never carried out or camping in the Vatican Jardines, which was also rejected, said Mrs. Gianfranschi.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, four conclaves were carried out in the Quirinal, the Pontifical Palace of the city that today is the residence of the Italian President. The transfer to the Quirinal was partly for practical considerations: it was more spacious and the number of cardinals had grown, said Mrs. Gianfranschi. But the potatoes lost the palace when Italy became a kingdom, and in 1878 the papal elections moved to the Sistine Chapel.
Under the rules of John Paul, a Vatican guest house was built with modest accommodations for voting cardinals.
