conclave

The set of apartments in which cardinals are secluded while the process to elect a pope takes place.

On Friday, St. John's Day, the 27th of December, the cardinals entered the conclave. […] Two hours before nightfall, the whole body met again in a chapel within the conclave, and after the bull of pope Julius [II] against simoniacal practices had been read, every cardinal, in the presence of the foreign ambassadors, took his corporal oath upon the Holy Evangelists to observe the bull to the best of his abilities.

A group of cardinals assembled to elect a new pope.

Of the ten Cardinals now forming the Conclave, five voted for Cardinal Geoffredo Castiglione [later Pope Celestine IV], a Milanese, nephew to Urban III, and three for Cardinal Romano [da Porto].

Two years afterwards Pius IX died, and the Conclave met in the Vatican to choose his successor. Its deliberations were short.

A group of cardinals assembled to elect a new pope.

[Thomas] VVol[sey]. […] Rome (the Nurſe of Iudgement) / Inuited by your Noble ſelfe, hath ſent / One generall Tongue vnto vs. This good man, / This iuſt and learned Prieſt, Cardnall Campeius [Lorenzo Campeggio], / VVhom once more, I preſent vnto your Highneſſe. / Kin[g Henry VIII]. And once more in mine armes I bid him vvelcome, / And thanke the holy Conclaue for their loues, / They haue ſent me ſuch a Man, I vvould haue vviſh'd for.

A closed assembly at which cardinals elect a pope.

in conclave

papal conclave

A closed assembly at which cardinals elect a pope.

The morrow after which was the thirde daye of the Counſayle, as the Archbiſhop was ſitting beneth in a conclaue with his felow Biſhops about him, conſulting together, the ſayde Biſhops labored by ſundry wayes and meanes, and with verie vehement perſwaſions and learned arguments to wyll him to obedience and to ſubmit himſelfe to the king, […]

The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim / In cloſe receſs and ſecret conclave ſat / A thouſand Demy-Gods on golden ſeat's, / Frequent and full.

To participate in a closed, private, or secret meeting.

[N]or […] were a group of the miserably destitute ever discovered conclaved gravely in the committee-room, where the Board of Directors are usually occupied in breaking hearts—while the said board were hammering might and main in the yard, where the miserably destitute are usually occupied in breaking stones.

That Mr. [Frederick Apthorp] Paley is no impassionate member of the Camden Brotherhood, as conclaved at Cambridge,—no luke-warm laggard either in his enthusiastic admiration of Middle-Aged Gothicisms, or in his derisive and unworthy deprecation of "Classic Christianisms," will be immediately inferred from the following passage, […]

Of a cardinal: to attend a closed assembly to elect a pope.

At Cardinal Verdi's urging the College of Cardinals at last conclaved behind locked doors, slipping into the heavily guarded Sistine Chapel through the underground tunnels for their deliberations.

"Brothers, we have a Pope!" Bennelli exclaimed. "But I request that you remain conclaved, until I consult the man whom we elected. I shall return within the hour."