WI women assured vote in papal elections?

[chornedsnorkack]

But not women generally, nor any laywomen. Nor right to be elected.
The college of cardinals was defined in 11th...12th centuries.
It consists of:

1. bishops, but not all bishops nor any archbishops - just the suburbicarian bishops
2. priests, of specified churches all in Rome, but not of all churches of Rome
3. deacons of Rome (just 7 for the big city).

So WI for some reasons (there was quite some dispute and many antipopes in 11th...12th century), College of Cardinals ends up including a fixed minority of women, all of them celibate while in office:
5. abbesses of a few specified nunneries in the city of Rome
as well as
4. abbots of a few specified monasteries in the city of Rome?
How likely might this be?

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

But not women generally, nor any laywomen. Nor right to be elected.
The college of cardinals was defined in 11th...12th centuries.
It consists of:

1. bishops, but not all bishops nor any archbishops - just the suburbicarian bishops
2. priests, of specified churches all in Rome, but not of all churches of Rome
3. deacons of Rome (just 7 for the big city).

So WI for some reasons (there was quite some dispute and many antipopes in 11th...12th century), College of Cardinals ends up including a fixed minority of women, all of them celibate while in office:
5. abbesses of a few specified nunneries in the city of Rome
as well as
4. abbots of a few specified monasteries in the city of Rome?
How likely might this be?

When a woman can't even become a priest this is basically impossible

 

[chornedsnorkack]

When a woman can't even become a priest this is basically impossible

Cardinal deacons were deacons. Not priests. And there were (male) "lay cardinals".

 

[Kellan Sullivan]

@Nuraghe

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

Cardinal deacons were deacons. Not priests. And there were (male) "lay cardinals".

With the mentality of the time, it's impossible

 

[chornedsnorkack]

As of 1792, one vote in Reichstag college of princes (out of a hundred...) was structurally controlled by women.

 

[Evil Crusader]

"Just" very unlikely, honestly.

 

[Kellan Sullivan]

As of 1792, one vote in Reichstag college of princes (out of a hundred...) was structurally controlled by women.

It wasn't in the college of princes. It was in the Ecclesiastical College. And the Ecclesiastical College only had thirty six votes. Two (prelates of the Rhine and prelates of Swabia) counted for all 15 princess-abbesses in the Reich. If you want to blame anyone, blame the Reformation. There were fifteen abbesses in 1792, but pre-1516, around twice as many. The abbeys lost were either secularized or brought under direct control of the neighbouring princes

 

[da Racontor]

The big question is "why?" From a medieval standpoint, what difference would having women votes make?
Now, the average woman was considered to be lesser than men at the time, but they did acknowledge that certain women could participate on equal footing. (If you want an example look at St. Theresa of Avila, among other things she basically wrote a letter to the pope telling him to get his crap together, & it worked).

But even in those circumstances, being a woman was not seen as "bring a different perspective," at the time.
They would have seen it as the same as if I were to ask a male scientist "how does thermodynamics work?" & then I ask a female scientist with the exact same degree.
I would expect relatively same answer.

 

[chornedsnorkack]

The big question is "why?" From a medieval standpoint, what difference would having women votes make?

Potentially, entrenching some College of Cardinal votes as harder to achieve by career.
Certainly there would be attempts by all interested parties to manipulate the patronage. It would have knock-on effects if a sister of German Emperor or mother of English king is abbess not of Quedlinburg, Syon or Fontevraud but a Cardinal Abbess of a qualifying nunnery in Rome, with right to sit and vote in conclave (though not be herself elected as Popess).

 

[da Racontor]

Potentially, entrenching some College of Cardinal votes as harder to achieve by career.
Certainly there would be attempts by all interested parties to manipulate the patronage. It would have knock-on effects if a sister of German Emperor or mother of English king is abbess not of Quedlinburg, Syon or Fontevraud but a Cardinal Abbess of a qualifying nunnery in Rome, with right to sit and vote in conclave (though not be herself elected as Popess).

But from the medieval perspective, the gender is irrelevant if you have the qualifications.
So, you're just adding a bunch of extra work for the pope to finding one of those few particular women when it is easier to find a guy with the same qualities, as well as open the process up to inevitable attacks by those who are going to accuse the women as being unqualified.

If you're going to make something like this happen, your either going to have to make a very very large number of men ineligible in a very very short time so that they have to scramble to replace them. Or start the concept of modern feminism a lot earlier, potentially in pagan Rome or Greece.

 

[chornedsnorkack]

But from the medieval perspective, the gender is irrelevant if you have the qualifications.

Not quite.
It is easier for a man without birth-family connections to claim merit to become an abbot than it is for a woman without birth-family qualifications to claim merit to become an abbess.

If you're going to make something like this happen, your either going to have to make a very very large number of men ineligible in a very very short time so that they have to scramble to replace them.

The expectations on who could be a cardinal and how many there should be, changed. Repeatedly.

 

[sarahz]

When a woman can't even become a priest this is basically impossible

It depends on whether Holy Orders could be in any way represented in decision making, this might require quite an early departure in Church history where monks were much more successful in early power struggles with the Bishops and sort of dragged Nuns into the equation as collateral. .

 

[da Racontor]

Not quite.
It is easier for a man without birth-family connections to claim merit to become an abbot than it is for a woman without birth-family qualifications to claim merit to become an abbess.

From the perspective of the individual, not from the perspective of the pope/whichever council.

What they are only interested in is getting the "right" pope elected, nothing else. (Even if their idea of "right" was self-serving.

The expectations on who could be a cardinal and how many there should be, changed. Repeatedly.

Exactly why that would be extremely hard, almost impossible.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

It depends on whether Holy Orders could be in any way represented in decision making, this might require quite an early departure in Church history where monks were much more successful in early power struggles with the Bishops and sort of dragged Nuns into the equation as collateral. .

This is with a 11/12th century POD, making this scenario very implausible

 

[Infinite-Monkeys]

I agree with the general consensus it would make no sense of a mediaeval mindset, to give women votes in the papal election.

However, I think the trick is how to make it so that it makes sense to give specific women votes.

As noted by the OP at this point the vote was very much a Roman/Italian affair. I don't know a great deal about mediaeval Italian politics but I do know in the period in both England and France you had some regions where individual abbesses had acquired enough power they tended to have, quite a lot of political say e.g. Barking Abbey, in England. So I think the trick here is, Have one or more (and to be honest smaller the number the easier as it treated more like a unique case, and avoids awkward precedents), Abbey acquire an awful lot of temporal power, and cash this could potentially be done as easily as having a very rich ruler die without sons, willing much of his estate to an Abbey where his daughter is Abbess ( I know from the English examples that was a route for this to happen), followed by a few competent abbesses building on that, to the point where there is a specific Abbey it is seen as politically unwise to not include the abbess of in the conversation, and then a theological justification will be retrofitted!

If this happened a long term I do not think it would affect things too much, the vote is still overwhelmingly held by men, and your average abbesses is not going to show markedly different views to them, However if we assume a fairly butterfly free zone, I suspect it does start to have an influence when we get into the more modern era (1950s onwards), as is already a precedent that women can take part in the election, so there's a route of least resistance starting by expanding the Abbeys involved to try and increase women's voices in Catholic leadership.

 

[Nuraghe]

But not women generally, nor any laywomen. Nor right to be elected.
The college of cardinals was defined in 11th...12th centuries.
It consists of:

1. bishops, but not all bishops nor any archbishops - just the suburbicarian bishops
2. priests, of specified churches all in Rome, but not of all churches of Rome
3. deacons of Rome (just 7 for the big city).

So WI for some reasons (there was quite some dispute and many antipopes in 11th...12th century), College of Cardinals ends up including a fixed minority of women, all of them celibate while in office:
5. abbesses of a few specified nunneries in the city of Rome
as well as
4. abbots of a few specified monasteries in the city of Rome?
How likely might this be?

@Nuraghe

So before addressing the elephant in the room ( i.e. whether or not women can vote in the conclave ) I would like to make a small introduction on how the college of cardinals developed ( who usually had to assist the pontiff in the government of the church state / papal state, therefore they were mostly from the Roman aristocracy or promoted by the local hierarchy ( at least 2/3 of the curia, with the rest foreigners, at the time the college was made up of 20/30 cardinals ) furthermore we must not forget the obvious logistical problems for a non-Italian cardinal to reach Rome ) , technically although its official origins date back to 1059 ( i.e. at the Lateran Council held in that year ) where it was established that the election of the Pope should take place exclusively by the college of cardinals and should take place in Rome and that the elected person should possibly be chosen from among the local Roman clergy, so tried to exclude the active intervention of the Roman nobility in the election of the pontiffs ( which in the previous century led to pornocracy ), as well as placing limits on the direct influence of the emperor in the choice of the candidate, but already previously ( in the Lateran Council of 769 ), there was an agreement on the fact that the newly elected Pope could not be a lay person and that the lay people could not take part in the election, but only in the final acclamation of the candidate elected by the Roman clergy ( a method of very clear imperial derivation, very similar to the enthronement of a new Augustus ) taking another step forward in time we arrive at Roman Constitutio of 824, which provided that the newly elected Pontiff had to take an oath of loyalty to the emperor before enthroning himself and that the emperor had a right to confirm his election ( which technically had to act as a counterweight to the Pope's exclusive right to consecrate the Emperor ), then we have the concession made by Pope Clement II to Henry III, in case an election dragged on for a long time or was contested, the emperor had the right to nominate his own candidate to avoid the vacant seat continue, but it is very correct to say that the current method of the curia closed in the conclave to choose a pontiff was adopted only towards the 12th century ( but it still did not completely exclude imperial intervention or popular acclamation, which were finally considered universally invalid only after the Western Schism ), returning to the topic, it is correct to state that even today there is no clause in canon law that could officially prohibit a woman from entering the college of cardinals ( given that until the 11th century, there were women who held the position of deacon, even if they were extremely extraordinary cases ) but it is also true that even if they could not actively participate in the choice of the pontiff, many important ladies throughout history have intervened politically to change papal policy ( such as Christina of Sweden, who was founder and patron of the party of zealots in the curia, Catherine Sforza who in 1484 held the curia in check for a 12 days, threatening them from Castel Sant'Angelo, until a pontiff of his liking was elected, Matilde of Canossa herself, relative and protector of the Popes, as well as other important queens and saints of the epic ( such as Isabella of Castile or Catherine of Siena, who could afford to preach to the Pope, without any fear ) obviously to understand how strong female influence was really present for the Romans, albeit through backdoor ways in the curia, just think of the most famous legend of the Middle Ages, namely the existence of the elusive Popess Joan, who according to some new "research" based on studies on coins and papal seals of the 8th/9th century ( in particular regarding the pontificate of John VIII, in the years from 856 to 859 where there are discrepancies ) it can be deduced that this " Popess " reigned in that period, even if essentially the first chronicles about her date back to about 3 centuries after her alleged pontificate ( it's because the same authors of those chronicles took her story with a pinch of salt ) now technically in this legend, in reality there is a grain of truth is, given that the myth is probably based on events that actually happened in Rome, during the Saeculum Obscurum, concerning Marozia and her family ( i.e. the Tuscoli counts, the Crescenzi family and the Teophylatti ) and their puppet pontiffs, or on the fact that in that street, where legend has it that she gave birth (Joan), there actually existed a family called Papas, who worked for the Vatican and that the eldest daughter inherited her father's monthly payments directly from her employer ( the Papacy ), furthermore it was not at all strange that in Rome women were extremely influential in the curia, especially if they had the right contacts ( see Madonna Olimpia Pamphili or like Joan of Armoise, who served in the papal army for six years following the example of Joan of Arc ), as it is frequent that in Italy there were abbesses so rich and influential that they could decide on their own almost personally on the politics of a given region, the latter in particular was very widespread in Calabria ( even under the Habsburgs ) therefore it can be said that women in the past they were actually capable of remotely governing the papacy, but as regards a girl who actually became a cardinal, things are much more complicated, I believe that we would have to go far back in time, so much so that it could drastically change the very development of primitive Christianity / first centuries

 

[da Racontor]

I agree with the general consensus it would make no sense of a mediaeval mindset, to give women votes in the papal election.

However, I think the trick is how to make it so that it makes sense to give specific women votes.

It's not quite that simple.
But you wouldn't even get to rest if the "why?" isn't addressed.

The term "lay cardinal" is technically a misnomer, as it was a transitional state. While the layman could be appointed as a cardinal they would not stay a layman but be ordained is some form afterwards. This would still bar women as they are ineligible for any rank of priestly ordination.

To my knowledge, there is no absolute reason why only the ordained people can participate in the election.
While I do no a lot about these sorts of things, I am not an expert so there could be something I am missing.

However, getting all of these things changed, even if there is a reason, is still going to be extremely difficult & may cause a potential schism if tried.

As noted by the OP at this point the vote was very much a Roman/Italian affair. I don't know a great deal about mediaeval Italian politics but I do know in the period in both England and France you had some regions where individual abbesses had acquired enough power they tended to have, quite a lot of political say e.g. Barking Abbey, in England. So I think the trick here is, Have one or more (and to be honest smaller the number the easier as it treated more like a unique case, and avoids awkward precedents), Abbey acquire an awful lot of temporal power, and cash this could potentially be done as easily as having a very rich ruler die without sons, willing much of his estate to an Abbey where his daughter is Abbess ( I know from the English examples that was a route for this to happen), followed by a few competent abbesses building on that, to the point where there is a specific Abbey it is seen as politically unwise to not include the abbess of in the conversation, and then a theological justification will be retrofitted!

The other thing is, it would be far easier for a powerful abbess to influence things indirectly anyway.

returning to the topic, it is correct to state that even today there is no clause in canon law that could officially prohibit a woman from entering the college of cardinals ( given that until the 11th century, there were women who held the position of deacon, even if they were extremely extraordinary cases )

I'd just like to add a clarification note. It is a matter of debate as to whether or not the use of the word "deacon" (or more relevant "deaconess") is the same in those instances as the standard (modern) definition of the word.
Beyond that, that looks like a good description to me.

 

[chornedsnorkack]

If this happened a long term I do not think it would affect things too much, the vote is still overwhelmingly held by men, and your average abbesses is not going to show markedly different views to them,

Agreed. The Ecclesiastical College, as of 1792:

• 2 archbishops (Salzburg and Besancon. 3 were in Electoral College, and 2, namely Magdeburg and Bremen, lost to Reformation)
• 22 bishops
• Heads of 7 monasteries at individual vote each: 4 titled "abbot", 3 titled "provost"
• Grand Masters of 2 knightly orders (Teutonic and Maltese) - by definition lay brethren ineligible for ordination due to bloodshed, so totalling 33 individual votes
• and 2 benches with 1 vote each.

The benches were:

• Swabian Bench - 17 abbots and 5 abbesses
• Rhine Bench - 8 abbots and 9 abbesses

As can be seen, women controlled 1 vote of 35. Lay brethren (knights of knightly orders) held 2, abbots and priors 8 (7 individual and the Swabian bench), bishops 22 and archbishops 2.

 

[Coluber]

Been waiting for an excuse to post this!