There were military operations, both inside and outside the City of Rome, towns and properties were destroyed, Guelphs and Ghibellines warred against each other, and two of the cardinals were captured in battle and were held prisoner by the Emperor Frederick II.

But, even though Pope Celestine was buried on the day after his death, according to custom, certain cardinals had already left Rome, being unwilling to endure the situation of September and October again.

[7] The Emperor wrote a second time, in May, an elaborate rhetorical exercise based on the topos of the Church as a ship without its steersman and the danger of shipwreck (schism).

Cardinal Oddone di Monferrato was present in Anagni and signed the letter; he had been released by the Emperor in August 1242.

The "maybe six, maybe seven" cardinals left in Rome immediately after the death of Celestine IV did not represent a party, but merely those who had not yet decided on what course of action to take.

He met the army at Capua, and in May he headed north toward Rome, where he began to attack and destroy castelli and cause as much destruction as he could.

Frederick then released Cardinal Jacobus de Pecorara, whom he had held prisoner since his capture in the Battle of Giglio in May 1241.

The Romans complained that the failure to elect a pope after so many months was not their fault, but that of the obstinate and quarrelsome cardinals, who were in hiding.

Nicolas de Curbio, the biographer of both Gregory IX and Innocent IV, says that it was a year, six months and six days before the cardinals finally sat down together for an Election, in the Cathedral of Anagni.

Despite the vicissitudes they had suffered since the death of Gregory IX, and the devastation of the Emperor Frederick's army, it nevertheless took the cardinals over five weeks to choose a pope.

[15] At the time of the election the Emperor Frederick was at Melfi, where, when he heard the news, he ordered the Te Deum to be sung throughout his kingdom.