Conclave 1559 by Hollingsworth Mary

Author:Hollingsworth, Mary
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800244726
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2021-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

• Spanish led by Sforza and Madruzzo

17 votes

• New cardinals led by Carafa and Farnese

15 votes

• French led by Ippolito d’Este and Guise

16 votes

two-thirds majority needed: 32 votes

Vargas’s campaign for Carpi’s election began in earnest on Wednesday, 15 November. Sforza, Madruzzo, Farnese and Carafa were now all working together, if not in complete amity then at least with a degree of agreement between them, no doubt assisted by Vargas who was regularly in attendance at night-time meetings with all four party bosses. They knew that if they could get all their supporters behind them, then they had exactly the thirty-two votes necessary to secure Carpi’s election and the key to success would be to build up momentum in Carpi’s favour. However, Carpi only received a disappointing nine votes in the scrutiny that day and, though he had eleven the next morning, the vote count had only increased to twelve on Friday.32 Even the stubborn Vargas had to admit that the strength of the opposition to Carpi, spearheaded by Ippolito, made him unelectable and the campaign was abandoned on Sunday. Carpi accepted the decision with good grace and agreed to withdraw from the race.

In the space of a week, the two candidates who had dominated the conclave since it had begun in early September were both out. ‘We are still adjusting to the fact’, Ippolito and Guise informed their king on Monday, 20 November, ‘that Carpi, just like Gonzaga, has declared that he no longer has any pretensions to the papal throne.’33 With these two favourites out of the race, Ippolito could now start to build up support for his own ambitions for the papal tiara. As he had also been excluded by Philip II, he could not expect to make an alliance with the Spanish cardinals and he knew he needed Carafa’s votes to succeed. Ippolito and Guise, who had extracted a promise from Carafa that he would join the French after Carpi’s campaign was over, were now waiting for him to honour his word. Carafa, however, continued to prevaricate. ‘For our part, we have not been losing time’, they continued in their letter to the king of 20 November. ‘We are trying to come to some agreement with Carafa, who replies to us with favourable words, that he will do what he promises in good time.’ Ippolito and Guise must have been very aware that it would not help to force the unpredictable Carafa into a corner. ‘We are both prepared to give him more time’ and ‘to conduct ourselves with him in the most patient way possible,’ they added, judiciously.

Ippolito must also have been buoyed up to hear of the safe landing of his nephew Alfonso on the coast of Tuscany. On 18 November he wrote to Renée: ‘Yesterday evening there was news here that the duke landed at Livorno on 14 November, which is an enormous relief to me… and if this is true your excellency will have been informed earlier than me, though I have heard nothing from him.

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