ABSTRACT
The most extraordinary fact about Hyacinth Bobone is that he was ever elected pope. Having been appointed cardinal deacon by Celestine II (1143-44) (or possibly by Lucius II) in 1144,1 he watched numerous colleagues in the Sacred College rise through the grades to cardinal bishop and even pope before, at the age of about eighty-six, when most of those colleagues had ‘gone the way of all flesh’, he was elected nemine contradicente on 29 or 30 March 1191, the very day of his predecessor Clement III’s death,2 ordained priest on 30 March or, more probably, 13 April (Easter
* ‘Make my steps perfect in thy ways’ (Ps. 16 (17): 5); or, as the King James version has it, ‘Hold up my goings in thy paths’. This was the personal device or motto inscribed in the rota at the bottom of Celestine’s privileges. The rota consisted of a double circle (containing the device), within which was drawn a cross containing in the upper quadrants the names of Saints Peter and Paul, and in the lower quadrants the pope’s name and title:
Scs Petrus
Scs Paulus
Cele pp.
