All Vatican elections

1378 Conclave

elected Urban VI

7–9 April 1378 · Conclave law and the Great Schism · Old St. Peter's Basilica, Papal States

The 1378 papal conclave, held from 7–9 April 1378, was the papal conclave which was the immediate cause of the Western Schism in the Catholic Church. The conclave was one of the shortest in the history of the Catholic Church.

Elected pope

Urban VI

Bartolomeo Prignano

Succeeded

Duration

3 days

Cardinal electors

locked in under conclave rules

Key officials

DeanAnge de Grimoard

Ballot-by-ballot tallies are destroyed by design — the paper is burned in the stove whose smoke announces the result — so this entry records what the Church documents: the dates, the electors, the number of ballots where known, and the man who walked out onto the balcony.