A fragment of the Septizodium as it looked in the 16th century
The 1227 papal election (19 March), was convoked after the death of Pope Honorius III on 18 March 1227 at Rome.
The cardinals present at Rome assembled in the Septizodium[1] on the next day after the death of Honorius III and decided to elect the new Pope by compromissum, meaning not by the whole Sacred College of Cardinals but by the committee of few of them, empowered by the rest to appoint the new Pontiff. The same procedure had been already used in the previous election. The committee numbered three cardinals, among whom were cardinal-bishops Ugolino di Segni of Ostia and Konrad von Urach of Porto (the name of the third one is not registered). Initially the committee elected its member Konrad von Urach with two votes out three, but he refused the tiara. Hereupon the rest of cardinals unanimously elected Ugolino di Segni (another committee member) on 19 March 1227. He reluctantly accepted the high honour, taking the name of Gregory IX.[2]
^The Catholic Encyclopedia: Pope Gregory IX; and Gaetano Moroni, vol. XXXII p. 257 and vol. LXXXV, p. 261. Timo Bandhold, p. 9, says that only Konrad von Urach is known to have been a committee member and the rest two members of that body are unknown
^The reconstruction is based on: Vatican History: Konklave 1227Archived 3 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine; F. Bourkle-Young: notes to the papal election of 1227 on The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church (by S. Miranda); and K. Eubel, p. 5 n. 5, but with corrections based on the biographical entries of the respective cardinals in Werner Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216, Vienna 1984 and Elfriede Kartusch, Das Kardinalskollegium in der Zeit von 1181-1227, Univ. of Vienna 1948.
Sources
Konrad Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, volumen I, 1913
Gaetano Moroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni Vol. XXXII and vol. LXXXV, Tipografia Emiliana, Venezia, 1840 - 1861
