Pope Celestine IV (1241)

The Pope of Sixteen Days

Celestine IV is, first of all, one of the shortest pontificates in the history of the Church. Elected on October 25, 1241, he died on November 10: sources count fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen days depending on whether they begin with the election, the public announcement, or the date of death.^[11][12][13] The medieval biography of Pope Innocent IV by Nicholas of Curbio summarizes this administrative nothingness in a lapidary formula: the new pope "received no pallium, was not crowned, issued no bulls, and died within seventeen days."^[14]

This void is not merely a curiosity of the calendar. It raises a question the Church had to clarify across the centuries: at what point does a man truly become pope? Goffredo da Castiglione, already a bishop because he was cardinal-bishop of Sabina, was validly elected and therefore became bishop of Rome upon his acceptance; but he died before the solemn rites of enthronement. His case shows that the papacy rests on the accepted election, not on the coronation, which is only its public manifestation.

The First "Conclave" in History

The second reason to remember him is the manner of his election. To force paralyzed cardinals to choose a pope, the senator of Rome Matteo Rosso Orsini had them locked together under key, in sordid conditions, until they reached an agreement.^[15][16] It is the first time we see applied by force the idea that would give the conclave its name -- from Latin cum clave, "with a key."

The election of 1241 was not yet the institutional conclave later codified by the Council of Lyon in 1274; but it was its brutal ancestor, the precedent the Church would remember. In that sense, Celestine IV's phantom pontificate holds a real place in the history of Church institutions.

A Reign Without Acts, in the War Against Frederick II

Finally, this tiny reign reveals the great crisis of the thirteenth century: the mortal confrontation between priesthood and Empire. Gregory IX had died exhausted by his struggle against Frederick II; the emperor was holding two cardinals captive, occupying Church lands, and pressuring the election.^[17][18] Celestine IV had no time to act, but his mere existence shows a papacy besieged, divided, at the mercy of temporal powers -- Rome delivered to its senator, the Sacred College taken hostage by the Empire.

The Milanese, Presumed Nephew of Urban III

Goffredo da Castiglione was a Milanese, from the noble Lombard family of the Castiglioni.^[19][20] A persistent tradition, repeated by the major Catholic encyclopedias and by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, makes him the nephew of Pope Urban III -- himself a Milanese from the Crivelli family.^[21][22][23] The link would have passed through one of Urban III's sisters.

Modern historical criticism is nevertheless cautious on this point. Recent studies note that the claim is "without foundation" securely established, and may belong to a construction meant to magnify the origin of an ephemeral pope.^[24] Honesty therefore requires presenting this relationship as traditional but disputed: affirmed by older reference works, questioned by contemporary prosopography.

The Monk of Hautecombe: A Disputed Cistercian Tradition

Another tradition makes Goffredo a Cistercian monk. According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, he "entered the Cistercians at Hautecombe in 1187," the famous Savoyard abbey, before later entering an ecclesiastical career.^[25] The older Catholic Encyclopedia is more cautious and says only that he was "probably a Cistercian."^[26]

This tradition faces a chronological difficulty. If Goffredo really entered Hautecombe as early as 1187, his birth must be placed well before 1170 -- whereas other notices have him born later, toward the end of the twelfth century.^[27] Either the Cistercian account is exact, and the future pope was an extremely old man in 1241, or the date 1187 results from confusion. Several modern historians prefer to reserve judgment on the Hautecombe episode for lack of contemporary documentation. The point remains open.

Chancellor of Milan and Cardinal of Gregory IX

The firm ground of the sources begins with his ecclesiastical career in Lombardy. Goffredo appears as chancellor of the Church of Milan, a post attested between about 1223 and 1227 -- an administrative office of first importance in one of Italy's most powerful churches.^[28]

It was Pope Gregory IX who raised him to the purple. On September 18, 1227, Goffredo was created cardinal-priest of the title of San Marco.^[29][30] Eleven or twelve years later, in 1238 or 1239, he reached one of the highest ranks of the Sacred College by becoming cardinal-bishop of Sabina, one of the seven suburbicarian sees.^[31][32] As bishop of Sabina, he was therefore already a consecrated bishop well before his election to the sovereign pontificate -- a detail that clarifies the question of his missed "coronation."

Legate in Lombardy and Tuscany

Under Gregory IX, the Milanese cardinal was given a delicate diplomatic mission. In 1228-1229, he was sent as legate in Lombardy and Tuscany, regions where many cities and communes remained loyal to Emperor Frederick II.^[33] The legation achieved little: the Ghibelline loyalty of the Lombard cities resisted papal diplomacy.

The episode matters. It shows that Goffredo knew from close range the Italian front in the struggle between pope and Empire -- the very front that, thirteen years later, would dominate the conclave from which he emerged as pope. Electing a man experienced in Lombard affairs was not an indifferent choice in 1241.

The Death of Gregory IX

The context of the election was that of a Church brought low. On August 22, 1241, the old pope Gregory IX died in Rome, worn down by years of war against Frederick II.^[34][35] The English chronicler Matthew Paris attributed his end to immense grief, overwhelmed as he was by the accumulation of disasters: the failure of the council he had summoned, the capture of his prelates at sea, and the emperor's military advance.

"Pope Gregory, broken by so many tribulations, died of immense grief." -- Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, year 1241^[36][37]

At Gregory IX's death, the Sacred College was decimated and divided. Of the dozen or so cardinals the Church then had, several were missing or split over how to face the Empire. Perhaps no papal election had ever opened in so perilous a situation.

The Capture of the Cardinals at the Battle of Giglio

The hardest blow had come a few months earlier. On May 3, 1241, off the island of Giglio (between Elba and Montecristo), Frederick II's Pisan and imperial fleet attacked the Genoese galleys carrying to Rome the prelates summoned by Gregory IX for a council.^[38][39] The disaster was complete: many bishops and abbots were captured, and above all two cardinals -- Oddone de Montferrat and Giacomo da Pecorara -- fell into the emperor's hands and were imprisoned.^[40][41]

By holding princes of the Church captive, Frederick II struck directly at the electoral college of the future pope. At the moment of the conclave, two electors were therefore behind the emperor's bars -- an unprecedented brutal pressure on a papal election.

Rome in the Hands of Senator Matteo Rosso Orsini

Within the city itself, temporal power had passed to the senator Matteo Rosso Orsini, a powerful Roman aristocrat -- father of the future Pope Nicholas III.^[42][43] Determined to give Rome a pope as quickly as possible, and to prevent the cardinals' division from benefiting Frederick II, Orsini chose the strong-arm method: instead of allowing the cardinals to deliberate freely and indefinitely, he resolved to sequester them until they agreed.

The Cardinals Locked In

Matteo Rosso Orsini had the cardinals locked in an old dilapidated building in Rome, which the sources call the Septizonium (or Septasolium, the "Precinct of the Sun"), on the Palatine.^[44][45] The conditions of this forced confinement passed into memory for their squalor. The chroniclers, beginning with Matthew Paris, describe an unhealthy prison: the ruined roof let in rain, and it was even claimed that urine from the guards posted on the roof flowed down, mixed with the water, into the hall where the princes of the Church sat.^[46][47] Heat, lack of food, crowding, and filth made the stay deadly.^[48]

The contemporary Ryccardus of San Germano records the blunt fact soberly:

"The cardinals gathered in the City for the election of the pope were locked in the Septasolium by the senator and the Romans, and compelled to proceed to the creation of a pope." -- Ryccardus of San Germano, Chronica, year 1241^[49]

The sequestration was therefore not a hostile chronicler's rumor: it was public knowledge.

The Death of Cardinal Robert de Somercote

The brutality of the enclosure claimed a victim. The English cardinal Robert de Somercote fell ill and died on September 26, 1241, during the sequestration.^[50][51] Heat and scarcity doubtless contributed to his end; but the cardinals of the imperial party went so far as to claim that he had been poisoned.^[52]

His friend Matthew Paris, who held him in high esteem, would later maintain that Somercote could have been elected pope himself had he lived -- and did not hesitate to speak of poison, both for him and for Celestine IV.^[53] These accusations, unverifiable, at least reveal the violence of the climate in which the election unfolded.

The Factions: Colonna Against the Anti-Imperials

The blockage came from a political fracture within the College. Two parties faced one another. On one side stood the cardinals hostile to Frederick II, heirs of Gregory IX's hard line; on the other, the party dominated by Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, more accommodating toward the Empire.^[54][55] Neither camp was strong enough to impose its candidate, and the temporary release of one of the captive cardinals, Oddone de Montferrat, was not enough to unblock the vote.^[56]

Goffredo da Castiglione prevailed precisely as a candidate of transaction:

"On Oct. 25, 1241, this divided 'first conclave' finally elected Colonna's candidate, the aged, infirm Goffredo, as Celestine IV." -- New Catholic Encyclopedia, "Celestine IV, Pope"^[57]

His great age and failing health, far from being objections, made him a provisional pope acceptable to all -- a respite before the real battle for the succession.

Frederick II Presses the Cardinals

Outside, the emperor added his pressure to that of the senator. Frederick II, whose troops controlled the Italy around Rome, ordered the cardinals to finish the matter in a letter of imperious tone. The chroniclers preserved the biting address:

"Like serpents you cling to the earth instead of raising yourself to the skies... Renounce the spirit of faction and of discord!" -- Frederick II, letter to the cardinals, 1241^[58]

The excommunicated emperor thus posed as a spiritual lecturer to the princes of the Church -- a supreme irony that summarizes the inversion of power relations in 1241: temporal power was pressing the Church to give itself a head.

The Compromise Election of October 25, 1241

After two months of enclosure and bargaining, the impasse was finally broken. On October 25, 1241, the cardinals -- only ten voters, one of whom would die soon after -- elected Goffredo da Castiglione, who took the name Celestine IV.^[59][60][61] The choice of name was not neutral: it returned to that of Celestine III, who had died forty-three years earlier and whom Goffredo may perhaps have known in his youth.

The election did not resolve the crisis; it merely suspended it. The pope chosen was already old and exhausted. The Church had a head again, but a head so fragile that everyone knew the respite might be brief.

No Bull, No Government

Celestine IV's reign was a pontificate without acts. He had no time to promulgate any bull, make any decision, or hold any useful consistory.^[62][63] The papal machine, barely set in motion again, stopped at once. No document issued by his hand has survived, for the simple reason that he issued none.

This absence sometimes makes his pontificate look like a blank line. It is not. In the logic of the Church, Celestine IV was not a "pope-elect" who failed before the threshold: he was elected pope. His pontificate was real, but historically almost silent.

Death on November 10, 1241

Celestine IV died on Sunday, November 10, 1241, in Rome, "old and sick," barely more than two weeks after his election.^[64][65] As with Cardinal Somercote, Matthew Paris hinted at poisoning; but exhaustion, age, and illness are more than enough to explain a death for which everything had prepared.^[66]

His disappearance immediately reopened the question of succession. The cardinals who had just endured the Septizonium had no desire to repeat the experience, and the imperial crisis remained intact.

The Question of the Coronation

A question often returns in the sources: was Celestine IV crowned? The answer is almost certainly no. The New Catholic Encyclopedia notes that he died "possibly before he was crowned," and the biography of Innocent IV by Nicholas of Curbio states it clearly:

"He received no pallium, was not crowned, issued no bulls, and died within seventeen days." -- Nicholas of Curbio, Life of Innocent IV^[67]

One frequent confusion must be removed here. That Celestine IV was not "crowned" or "consecrated" does not mean he was not a bishop: he had already been one since 1238-1239 as cardinal-bishop of Sabina.^[68][69] What he lacked was not episcopal consecration, but the papal coronation and solemn enthronement -- the public rites by which the dignity of the bishop of Rome shone before all. Validly elected and already a bishop, Goffredo was therefore truly pope, even for sixteen days, even without his ornaments.

Burial at Saint Peter's

Celestine IV's body was buried in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.^[70][71] The ephemeral pope, who had not had time to mark his reign by a single act, thus found his place near the tomb of the Apostle, among his predecessors and successors. His tomb does not preserve the memory of a great government, but that of a tragic election and a suspended pontificate.

The Longest Vacancy Since the Seventh Century

Celestine IV's death settled nothing: it reopened the crisis, worse than before. Frightened by the sequestration they had just endured, several cardinals fled Rome; Frederick II, master of central Italy, prevented any new assembly as long as it served his advantage.^[72][73] The Holy See remained vacant for about one year and seven months -- the longest papal vacancy since the seventh century, since the interval between Pope Agatho and Pope Leo II (681-682).^[74]

This interminable vacancy is, paradoxically, the main historical effect of Celestine IV's pontificate: his premature death, the direct consequence of an election torn out by violence, plunged the Church into a major institutional crisis at the heart of its struggle with the Empire.

Innocent IV and the End of the Crisis

The cardinals had to wait until Frederick II's pressure loosened before they could finally meet, not in Rome but at Anagni. On June 25, 1243, they elected the Genoese cardinal Sinibaldo Fieschi, who took the name Innocent IV.^[75] With him, a real government of the Church resumed -- and so did the struggle against Frederick II, which Innocent IV would carry to the solemn deposition of the emperor at the Council of Lyon in 1245.

Between Gregory IX and Innocent IV, Celestine IV's sixteen-day pontificate thus appears as a tragic parenthesis, an aborted surge between two great fighting popes.

The "First Conclave" and the Birth of an Institution

The most durable legacy remains. The locking-in of the cardinals in 1241 is often described as the first "conclave" in the proper sense -- that is, the first in which the electors were shut under key until the election.^[76][77] The experience, brutal and improvised, had nothing of a regulated procedure; but it inaugurated a practice that the Church would eventually make her own.

Three decades later, after another interminable vacancy (that of Viterbo, 1268-1271), the Council of Lyon finally codified the institution in the constitution Ubi periculum (1274): the cardinals would henceforth be gathered cum clave, isolated from the world and subject to an increasingly strict regime until they had given the Church a pope. The sinister Septizonium of 1241 was, in this sense, the remote cradle of the modern conclave.

Celestine IV's tiny reign concentrates, in miniature, the trials of the thirteenth-century papacy. It first shows a besieged Church: an excommunicated emperor capturing cardinals, surrounding Rome and dictating the pace of an election; a city delivered to its senator; a torn and powerless Sacred College. Perhaps never had the freedom of the Church in choosing her head seemed so compromised.

It also reveals a truth of law that the Church would long ponder: a pope is pope by his accepted election, not by the pomp of his coronation. Goffredo da Castiglione, who received neither pallium nor tiara and signed not a line, was nevertheless truly pope. His figure reminds us that the office is not measured by duration or brilliance, but by the reality of the mandate received.

Finally, it reveals a spiritual lesson that Ignispedia is glad to note. A man's value before God is not identical with the trace he leaves in archives. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels" (2 Cor 4:7): the old Goffredo, crushed by a violent election and carried off before he could do anything, was only a fragile vessel, an almost empty name in the list of popes. But the Church does not forget him; for she knows that "the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Sam 16:7). A pontificate without glory is not, before God, a pontificate without value.

The secure core of this pontificate is slim but concordant: Goffredo da Castiglione, a Milanese cardinal of Gregory IX and cardinal-bishop of Sabina, was elected pope on October 25, 1241, at the end of a conclave in which the cardinals were forcibly locked in by Senator Matteo Rosso Orsini, in the context of the war against Frederick II; he died on November 10, 1241, without coronation or bull, and his death opened a vacancy of nearly a year and a half that ended with the election of Innocent IV in 1243. These facts are attested by the standard reference works -- Catholic Encyclopedia, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica -- by cardinalatial prosopographies, and by contemporary chroniclers (Matthew Paris, Ryccardus of San Germano, Nicholas of Curbio).^{[78][79][80][81][82]}

Several points remain disputed, especially regarding his youth and the length of his reign. The table below summarizes the main divergences between sources.

For this pontificate without archives of its own, the essential documentation is indirect: it must be reconstructed from the contemporary chronicles -- Matthew Paris's Chronica Majora, the chronicle of Ryccardus of San Germano, Nicholas of Curbio's Life of Innocent IV -- and from the accounts of the election gathered by modern scholarship, especially the documentary dossiers on the vacancy of 1241-1243.^{[83][84][85][86]}

• Pope Gregory IX -- predecessor, who died exhausted by his struggle against Frederick II and left the Church in full crisis.
• Pope Innocent IV -- successor after the long vacancy; he resumed the struggle against the Empire and had Frederick II deposed at the Council of Lyon (1245).
• Pope Celestine III (1191-1198) -- the pope whose name Goffredo took; another old man brought late to the throne of Peter.
• Pope Saint Celestine V (1294) -- another Celestine with a tragically short pontificate, famous for his resignation.
• Pope Saint Celestine I (422-432) -- the first pope of this name, judge of the Nestorian crisis.