Roman summers are notoriously ominous for the health of popes and cardinals alike. As the sultry summer of 1559 drew to a close, Paul IV, the harshly repressive pontiff infamous for establishing both the Roman Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited Books, died in the Apostolic Palace. While riots broke out across Rome, the College of Cardinals began their preparations for the forthcoming conclave. Given both the late pontiff’s misguided foreign and domestic policies and the fragile political situation across Western Christendom, the conclave met at a time of great importance.

Mary Hollingsworth returns to the tumultuous life of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este (1509-72) with a highly enjoyable and thrilling read in Conclave 1559. The second son of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso I d’Este, he had been catapulted into the church hierarchy aged nine when he inherited the archbishopric of Milan from his uncle of the same name. He was elevated to the College of Cardinals on 20 December 1538 in Paul III’s fifth set of creations. While Hollingsworth’s book on Ippolito’s life, The Cardinal’s Hat (2004), built upon her doctoral research on cardinal’s households and their roles as patrons of the arts, Conclave 1559 uses Ippolito’s surviving ledgers for the first time as a means of scrutinising the longest conclave of the 16th century and the ramifications it had across Christendom for years to come.

Papal conclaves still hold a unique fascination. Nevertheless, accounts from inside the walls of conclaves are rare. The publication of the Liber Notarum of the Papal Master of Ceremonies, Johannes Burchard (c.1450-1506), by Louis Thuasne in 1883-85 provided historians with evidence of the ceremonial aspects of the clandestine process. By using Ippolito’s own papers, Hollingsworth is able to portray the human side to the conclave process, the gruelling voting processes, the arduous politicking of the 47 cardinals and the practical side of outfitting each cardinal’s cell. It is this meticulous analysis that is the real merit of the book. Readers are presented with a clear picture of what life was like for those ensconced in the Sala Regia during this most clandestine of processes to the extent that the ‘aroma’ of the 47 men and their conclavisti, the tallow candles in the cardinal’s cells and rooms and the vast plates of food arriving for the sequestered cardinals seem olfactible.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Katharine Fellows recently completed a PhD on the office of the Papal Vice-Chancellor at St Peter’s College, Oxford.