Talk:1878 papal conclave

Tone of the Article
The 'gee-whiz' tone of this article, striving after artificial uniquenesses, is not in accordance with the writing style of an encyclopedia article. The issues are barely explained, and one would never guess the importance of the Unification of Italy. Could it be mentioned, for example, that Pius IX was maintained on his throne only with the support of French troops, and that when Napoleon III withdrew them to fight the Germans in 1870, the papal states crumbled into complete ruin?Vicedomino (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Conclave Factfile
No other conclave narrative on Wikipedia uses such a casual format to present its information. Shouldn't there be a list of all the cardinals, rather than this choppy effort to be selective and interesting? There were sixty-one cardinals at the Conclave, and each had one vote. The dwelling on all the scattered minority votes seems not to take into account that the first ballot was usually the time when a cardinal would pay a compliment to a fellow cardinal, or where a 'favorite son' would be put forth. Another source, BTW, gives Pecci 23 ballots on the first scrutiny. There was little question that Pecci would win; the question was how long it would take to reach the required two-thirds majority. He reached a simple majority on the second ballot. Is there some point in making a chart of the distribution of cardinalatial origins by continent, when all of the Cardinals were Europeans? And the idea of labelling forty cardinals as "Italians" in 1878 does no justice at all to their regional affiliations and their opinions on Italian unity--most were against it.Vicedomino (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Uniqueness (not)
Text states, "the longest reign of any other pope since Saint Peter, meaning that Pius IX had had a greater opportunity than any other pope in history to shape the College of Cardinals by selecting people who shared his worldview and religious vision." In fact, at the Conclave of 1389 all of the Cardinals had been appointed by Urban VI (though few of them shared his world view or religious vision--they revolted from him and he murdered some of them). Length of reign is no indicator of unity of thought among cardinal appointees. Also, the statement is no longer unique, since the reign of John Paul II eclipsed even the legendary reign of S. Peter. The record indicates that many of them did not share his political or religious views, and in the end they voted in 2013 to repudiate him and his alter-ego Benedict XVI.

Secondly, "the first conclave in which the person selected would reign as pope but not as sovereign of the Papal States, the latter having been swept away by the unification of Kingdom of Italy in 1870." There were hundreds of years of popes before there ever was The Papal States. And, not to go too deeply, "the Three Legations" had already been stripped away from the Papal States by the Austrians in 1798.

Pius IX and a Conclave
It might at least be mentioned that Pius IX had issued two bulls, giving the cardinals, on his death, the right to decide whether they could hold a conclave in Rome if the pressure from the Italian government was overwhelming. Pius and many of the cardinals feared that the Italians might invade the Vatican and liquidate the Papacy on the least provocation. The cardinals were given a wide latitude in dispensing themselves from many of the regulations that governed conclaves. Pecci's heroism is that he managed to get a conclave together and get a pope elected without doing anything to cause the Italians to move against the Vatican.Vicedomino (talk) 00:33, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Manning's Role
The statement in the text that Manning was speaking in favor of moving the Conclave out of Rome, even to Malta (Is this source authoritative? His topic seems rather distant from the ins-and-outs of a papal election.), does not seem to square with other information. On the 15th, he and four other cardinals got together in Cardinal Bartolini's apartment, and discussed the candidates for the Conclave. They settled on Pecci, and Manning agreed to talk to the non-Italians about his candidacy. It doesn't sound as though he's eager to leave Rome. See: E. S. Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning (New York: Macmillan 1896) Volume II, 547-552. Vicedomino (talk) 01:21, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

More on Manning
Did Manning have Disraeli's permission to make the offer of Malta? Did Disraeli consider that such an offer might bring down his government? There were considerable numbers of anti-Romanists in his party and in Britain. Did Manning think that the Cardinals might accept the offer of refuge from a Protestant country? Did they imagine that the British would not then interfere in a Conclave? Did they imagine that they could get back into the Vatican or even back into Italy once they had elected a Pope on Malta? How were they to get to Malta? Were the British prepared to risk war with Italy in order to send a ship to transport them? In fact, it took less than 24 hours between the First Congregation, when 30 cardinals thought they should consider leaving Italy, and the Second Congregation, when that number had dropped to 5, for Reality (or the Holy Spirit) to intervene.Vicedomino (talk) 12:21, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Trivia
Can't the data in this section be deployed elsewhere, with the list of cardinals that needs to be drawn up, perhaps? Oreglia living long enough to be at the 1903 conclave is truly trivial. Is this section appropriate for a serious treatment of an important subject??Vicedomino (talk) 01:24, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Infobox
Why does this Papal conclave have an infobox done up like a presidential election? GoodDay (talk) 22:11, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Votes
Why were there only a total of 44 votes if 61 cardinals participated? Does this mean that the reported vote counts are incorrect or is there some other explanation?Bill (talk) 01:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)