Fiammetta Rocco - The Miraculous Fever-Tree - Malaria, Medicine and the Cure that Changed the World

With no prospect of an early agreement, the cardinals retired at night to a series of small square cubicles, cells almost, that stretched down the corridors of the Belvedere at the centre of the palace. Each room contained a narrow cot of dark wood. Hanging above it on the wall was a crucifix. There was a jug of cold water for washing, and a prie-Dieu. The fare was hardly luxurious. Tradition had it that if no Pope were chosen within three days, the cardinals would be restricted for five days to one dish only at supper. If after that the chair of St Peter was still vacant, they would be fed for the remainder of their stay in the conclave on nothing but dry bread, wine and water.

The tensions in Rome in the last days of July 1623 reflected those all over Europe. With the counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church was once again flexing its muscles after having been temporarily cowed by the rise of Protestantism across the continent. While it had yet to reach the extremes of the Inquisition, the Catholic power of the counter-Reformation was already a force to be reckoned with. Rome would not be so easily swept aside by the new order. In Germany, the Bohemian revolution would soon spread. France and Spain, always natural enemies, were circling each other once again. Each wanted to extend its influence over the small princeling states of northern Italy and beyond, and saw the election of a new Pope as a heaven-sent opportunity to gain the upper hand.

As always at the start of a conclave there were many interests, many candidates. There was Cardinal Sauli, who at the age of eighty-five had been a major contender in at least two earlier conclaves, and would have been so again had it not been for the fact that he was known to be completely under the influence of his valet and his wife. There was Cardinal Ginnasio, an inveterate gambler who had won 200,000 crowns in one night while he was Papal Nuncio in Madrid. There was Cardinal Campori, who had arrived at the last minute in the hope that he might this time wear the tiara that had been denied him at the previous conclave. And there was Cardinal Ascoli, a monk who regarded uncleanliness as a sign of godliness, and was generally shunned by his more urbane colleagues. There was also the dead Pope’s young nephew, Ludovico Ludovisi, greedy for power and influence. Known as ‘il Nipote’ , it was he who introduced the word nepotism to Italian and the other Romance languages.

No clear victor emerged from the first scrutiny on the morning of 20 July. The votes of the fifty-five cardinals were distributed among several of their number, but it was already obvious that the final battle would be between two factions.

Ludovisi, despite his youth, was the leader of one group. He was hampered, however, by the fact that his uncle’s short pontificate meant he had been able to create only a small number of new cardinals. The recently appointed Cardinal Richelieu, who within months would become Chief Minister to the French King Louis XIII, mentions that Ludovisi begged the Pope on his deathbed to strengthen his party with fresh nominations. This the Pope refused to do, adding somewhat unexpectedly, ‘that he would already have to account to God for having made so many unworthy ones’.

The second group, which was made up largely of the cardinals who had been named by Pope Gregory’s predecessor, the Borghese Pope Paul V, was more powerful. Ten months earlier, in September 1622, its leader, Scipione Borghese, Pope Paul’s nephew, had given his fellow Cardinal Ludovisi a copper pendant painted by Guido Reni of the ‘Virgin Sewing’, but this did little to hide the fact that the two men hated one another. During Pope Gregory’s pontificate, Borghese had managed to keep his faction more or less intact, even though some of the cardinals supported him with more enthusiasm than others. Yet, big as it was, this group was not strong enough to carry the day without making strategic alliances with some of the other cardinals who were supported by an array of different interests.

The French, for one, were keen to play their part in the proceedings, and Richelieu regarded the election of a francophile Pope as essential to tilting matters France’s way in northern Italy, where politics were less than stable. Moreover, Richelieu knew that within the College of Cardinals was one who would be devoted to his interests.

Maffeo Barberini came from a Florentine family that had made a fortune in trade. Orphaned as a young boy, he was sent to his uncle, who was a member of the curia. When the lad showed promise, his uncle steered him into an ecclesiastical career, and before long he was appointed Papal Nuncio in France, where he made the acquaintance of Richelieu and the French King. This last was something of a stroke of luck. When the Nuncio in Spain, Cardinal Mellini, had been elevated to the purple, France immediately requested that as a matter of etiquette the same honour should be conferred on Barberini. Cornered, Pope Paul V, Scipione Borghese’s uncle, felt he had no alternative but to comply, which he did, though with little grace. So although technically Barberini was a cardinal of Borghese’s generation, he was not bound to him by any feelings of gratitude or loyalty. Richelieu, who was aware of these undercurrents, made secret arrangements with Ludovisi and the Grand Duke of Tuscany to support Barberini once their own candidates failed, as they were bound to do.

After the first day the scrutinies continued, with the voting swinging between Ludovisi’s first candidate, Cardinal Bandini, and Borghese’s Cardinal Mellini, a Florentine whom everyone knew would never be elected – not least because he had eighty-three nephews to provide for, which might risk carrying papal nepotism a little too far. Several days went by. The enmity between the two camps was almost physical, and Borghese and Ludovisi refused even to speak to one another. Matters were not helped by the heat, which was growing daily more oppressive. The cardinals were appalled at the idea of a protracted conclave under such unhygienic conditions.

Then, the calamity they had all feared happened. One by one, the cardinals began to fall ill with the fever. Still worse for some, more than two dozen of their attendants also became indisposed, and were incapable of attending to their duties. The cardinals’ underclothes remained unwashed. Their cubicles and the passages of the Belvedere where they were housed quickly fell into a condition of nauseating neglect, ‘the atmosphere being laden,’ one of them wrote in his diary, ‘with putrid miasmas and sickening smells of decaying victuals that the potent perfumes of the young cardinals could not manage to disguise.’ As Gigli added, ‘It was lacking in all dignity.’

By 3 August, after the college had been in conclave for fifteen days, at least ten of the fifty-five cardinals were ill with malaria. The next day, Borghese too succumbed. The physicians suggested potions, blistering, bleeding. Nothing worked. Borghese began thinking of leaving the conclave. All of a sudden, the francophile Cardinal Maffeo Barberini began canvassing support within his own party, supported by some of the other senior cardinals, including Ludovisi. On 5 August Cardinal Borghese had another and more severe attack of the fever. In a panic, he wrote to the Dean of the conclave asking for permission to quit the proceedings. Apprised of the fact, Ludovisi and his supporters began lobbying the Dean to refuse Borghese’s request. His absence, they argued, would create a deadlock, and the entire assembly would be forced to risk their health, even their lives, for the convenience of one man.

The Cardinal Prince of Savoia was entrusted with the task of telling Borghese that the Dean refused to grant him his request. Borghese fell into a rage, and when it was suggested to him that the election of Barberini might be the quickest and simplest solution to the problem, he realised that he had been outmanoeuvred by his enemies. Judging that anything was better than running the risk of remaining in the fetid atmosphere of the Holy City, he grudgingly gave his consent.