The Republican House Speaker Doom Loop
For three years in the thirteenth century, there was no pope. The cardinals who gathered in the small Italian town of Viterbo after Clement IV’s death in 1268 could not agree on a successor. A group of French cardinals hoped to elect one of their own to lead the church, while the others feared France’s influence in the Italian peninsula. A deadlock ensued, until the people of Viterbo locked the cardinals into a church, cut their rations, and removed its roof.