ergy and of the
laity, should be empowered to go and hold the election where they should
think fit; that should difficulties of any sort prevent the enthronement
of the new pope, the pope elect would be empowered immediately to act as
if he were actually pope. This legislation was definitely accepted by
the emperor by the concordat of Worms (1119).

A limited electoral body lends itself to more minute legislation than a
larger body; the college for electing the pope, thus reduced so as to
consist in practice of the cardinals only, was subjected as time went on
to laws of increasing severity. Two points of great importance were
established by Alexander III. at the Lateran Council of 1179. The
constitution _Licet de vitanda discordia_ makes all the cardinals
equally electors, and no longer mentions the lower clergy or the people;
it also requires a majority of two-thirds of the votes to decide an
election. This latter provision, which still holds good, made imperial
antipopes henceforth impossible.

The conclave.

Abuses nevertheless arose. An electoral college too small in numbers,
which no higher power has the right of forcing to haste, can prolong
disagreements and draw out the course of the election for a long time.
It is this period during which we actually find the Holy See left vacant
most frequently for long spaces of time. The longest of these, however,
gave an opportunity for reform and the remedy was found in the conclave,
i.e. in the forced and rigid seclusion of the electors. As a matter of
fact, this method had previously been used, but in a mitigated form: in
1216, on the death of Innocent III., the people of Perugia had shut up
the cardinals; and in 1241 the Roman magistrates had confined them
within the "Septizonium"; they took two months, however, to perform the
election. Celestine IV. died after eighteen days, and this time, in
spite of the seclusion of the cardinals, there was an interregnum of
twenty months. After the death of Clement IV. in 1268, the cardinals, of
whom seventeen were gathered together at Viterbo, allowed two years to
pass without coming to an agreement; the magistrates of Viterbo again
had recourse to the method of seclusion: they shut up the electors in
the episcopal palace, blocking up all outlets; and since the election
still delayed, the people removed the roof of the palace and allowed
nothing but bread and water to be sent in. Under the pressure of famine
and of this str