page_title: 1243 papal election
section_title: No Election in 1242
hierarchical_section_title: 1243 papal election / No Election in 1242
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Facade de la cathédrale Santa Maria d'Anagni
context_page_description: The 1243 papal election elected Cardinal Sinibaldo Fieschi of Genoa to succeed Pope Celestine IV. The conclave began after the Holy See had been vacant for 18 months and six days, therefore ca. May 16, 1243. There were nine cardinals present. Six votes were needed, therefore, for a canonical election. It took some five weeks for the cardinals to agree on an acceptable candidate. Fieschi took the name Innocent IV.
context_section_description: Emperor Frederick had left the neighborhood of Rome in September, 1241, while the Election was still in progress.  He was back at his palace in Foggia in October.  His third wife, Isabella of England, daughter of King John, died on 1 December 1241, and on 12 February (?), 1242, his son King Henry of Germany died as well.  He spent the entire year 1242 in the south in his own kingdom, mostly in Foggia, Capua, or Naples. He came nowhere near Rome or the cardinals.  He was, however, in contact with the cardinals.  In February 1242 he sent three ambassadors to Rome to the Papal Curia, to discuss a peace.  Frederick wanted the cardinals to get together and make a pope.  He also wrote directly to them, offering to release Cardinal Jacobus de Pecorara and Cardinal Oddo de Monferrato if the cardinals would proceed to an election.  The Emperor wrote a second time, in May, an elaborate rhetorical exercise based on the topos of the Church as a ship without its steersman and the danger of shipwreck (schism). This was for public consumption.  Another letter followed in July, more directly accusing the cardinals of driving the ship off-course:  how could they show the right path to those who had wandered from it, if they themselves were wandering off the right course?
  
  In the Spring of 1243, after a vacancy that had gone on for more than fifteen months, cardinals who had gathered at Anagni during that time, wrote a letter to an English prelate,  placing their names in the heading: 
  R[aynaldus] Ostiensis et Velletrensis, J[ohannes] tituli Sanctae Praxedis, S[inibaldus] tituli Sancti Luarentii in Lucina, S[tephanus] tituli Sanctae Mariae trans Tyberim, presbyteri; R[aynerius] Sanctae Mariae in Cosmedin, E[gidius] Sanctorum Cosmae et Damiani, O[tho] Sancti Nicholai in carcere Tulliano, diaconi; sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae Cardinales.
   Cardinal Oddone di Monferrato was present in Anagni and signed the letter; he had been released by the Emperor in August 1242. Cardinal Romano Bonaventura did not sign; he had died on February 21, 1243.  The names of these seven cardinals show who had left Rome by that time, and that the balance was shifting between the Imperial party (Ghibbelines) led by the Colonna, and the opposition, led by the Orsini. The "maybe six, maybe seven" cardinals left in Rome immediately after the death of Celestine IV did not represent a party, but merely those who had not yet decided on what course of action to take.  If one adds to these seven named cardinals Jacobus de Pecorara, who was being held by the Emperor, then there was only one cardinal still not present in Anagni: Ricardus Hannibaldi.
  In February 1243, the Emperor Frederick ordered the mustering of his army for April 1. He met the army at Capua, and in May he headed north toward Rome, where he began to attack and destroy castelli and cause as much destruction as he could. The two cardinals still in Rome fled to Anagni, and now that eight of the cardinals were assembled, they petitioned the Emperor who agreed to their request to return to his kingdom. Frederick then released Cardinal Jacobus de Pecorara, whom he had held prisoner since his capture in the Battle of Giglio in May 1241.  In being accommodating, however, King Frederick expected the cardinals to be cooperative and produce a pope.  And yet, they refused to start a conclave. Frederick showed his anger by launching his army against Rome.  The Romans complained that the failure to elect a pope after so many months was not their fault, but that of the obstinate and quarrelsome cardinals, who were in hiding. Frederick therefore redirected his army toward the estates of the cardinals and of the Church.
caption: Anagni Cathedral
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