of Charles of Anjou, led to the existence of two distinct parties in the Roman Curia; the one favourable to the French invasion, and composed of French elements; the other not exclusively Italian in composition, but yet by its feelings against. Charles of Anjou identified with the national sentiment. The inevitable consequences of this division were protracted and hotly contested elections, attended during the interregnum by a series of convulsions and tumults which reduced the Papal authority in Rome to a shadow. These lamentable circumstances reached a climax on the occasion of the Cardinals haying to choose a successor to Clement. IV., who died in Yiterbo on the 29th November 1268, one month after the head of the last Hohenstaufen had fallen on a scaffold in Naples, at least with the assent, if not by the direct complicity, of the Pope. In Yiterbo the Cardinals assembled —eighteen in number,—and for two years and nine months[1] Viterbo became the point on which remained fixed the anxious gaze of Christendom, awaiting the nomination of
- ↑ This is the longest interregnum on record. The next in length was the one on the death of Nicolas II., 1292, which lasted two years three months and two days.
