A Trembling Upon Rome

by Richard Condon

  `I do understand,' Cossa said. `We were cast into these roles. I am the son of a line of pirates. You are the son of a woman who was aboard a ship which my father took. Her fate was to drown, because, of all the women aboard those ships – about a hundred women only three of them drowned, so that was their fate. Bernaba was poor. You heard her. Until she went into her business as a courtesan, she didn't have enough to eat or maybe even a roof. We saved her from mutilation in the course of her work, yes, but we cost her a valuable client. So we owe her something. If we do nothing, if we turn her out upon the streets of a strange city, would that be right when you know we can help her? But, and this is the important point, Franco Ellera; the moment we help her on a large scale then she is obliged to give us a share in that business.'

  `I'll count it when I see it,' Bernaba said.

  `It will work,' he told her. `You will be a rich woman as long as you remember that I have nothing to do with any of this. Franco Ellera will be your contact. Franco Ellera will run Palo. We never had this conversation. If I am ever connected with this, a trentuno reale will be nothing to what will happen to you.'

  Bernaba yawned theatrically.

  `You understand me?'

  `Yes. It makes a lot of sense.'

  Bernaba moved into a very comfortable house which I found for her in Castelleto Street, where there was a market for the caviar-eyed Cyprian women who were forbidden to live near churches or monasteries – from what I have seen, at closest quarters, of church-men and monks, it would have. represented too much wear and tear on the, girls. The street was named after a celebrated brothel in Venice at the end of the Rialto bridge which I saw later on and ours was better.

  Cossa, who was exactly like his father, could never see anything wrong in anything which produced money. If, for example, 2000 people lived in a forest which grew many hundreds of kinds of medicinal plants of benefit to mankind, and if the forest contained dozens, of animals and maybe insects which were the only food for those people, and Cossa or his father had a good money offer for the wood, they would cut down the entire forest immediately and feel it had been a good transaction. They knew instinctively that one of the things about a lot of money is that it eliminates moral nagging instantly. They were just as direct about the pursuit of power. Cossa was committed to spending ten years studying law because, if he excelled at it, he would' be invited to enter the doorway to power through the Church.

  5

  The university was a key to Cossa in more ways than mere academic achievement. Thousands and thousands of students had flocked there since it had been established, but Cossa was possibly; the only one who exploited every opportunity. He became scholastically accomplished and he won scholastic honours while he was turning over in his mind how the university worked and how he could use that to move his career along.

  Within the university was the universitas, an association in the world of learning which corresponded to a guild in the world of commerce, a union among students possessing common interests to protect and advance. By the beginning of his fourth year at Bologna, Cossa dominated all the Cisalpine student unions – which included his own Neapolitan-Sicilian group as well as the Lombards, the Tuscans and the Romans- and several of the transalpine unions, by his bribery of the rectors who governed each union. I handled the direct bribery. Palo handled the threats. This, in addition to the amazingly personal information which Bernaba and her cortegiani amassed for him every night, about the many powerful citizens of Bologna, gave Cossa early standing with the city council and an important identity within the local Church which, in turn, reelected his growing eminence in its reports to Rome.

  Cossa had his own money, never used, from his father. He had a substantial income from Bernaba' s, business. But he made a lot of money by organizing and supplying protection for the gambling houses of the city, called baratterie, and, Be bribed his way to greatness with that.

  The baratterie were scattered throughout the city. They offered dice, draughts, knucklebones and skittles. Cossa arranged for Palo to form troops of street fighters from neighbouring towns and villages to begin quarrels in the gambling houses leading to violent brawls which broke up the baratterie. I would go in after the second time, it happened in each place, bringing with me outrage and sympathy, and grad; ally working out a system which guaranteed the owner total security from such disturbances, if he paid the fees.

  Cossa took only 50 per cent of this weekly income. Palo and I got 15 per cent each and the rest, was divided among the troops. No one could connect any of these illegalities with Cossa. He was the model student, the most promising lawyer in the student body. He was certain to rise in the Church.

  The amazing thing was that the climate agreed with all of us but, most of all, it agreed with Cossa. 'I feel like working here,' he said. 'I can do twice as much work and the food is so good that I may never eat a pizza again.'

  'You don't miss Procida?' -

  `I miss the freedom. But what is freedom, if it doesn't get you anywhere? I found out here, in Bologna; that I like to work. It is clear in my head that if I work, I am going to have the same freedom but I am also going to be one of the people who tells the other people what to do.'

  I grinned at him. 'That's one thing you don't need,' I said, Since you could talk, you've been telling people what to do.'

  Nearly all the servants of the royal and ducal courts – the diplomats, the consaglieri to great nobles, the architects and the entire tribe of lawyers were ecclesiastics. The civilization owed its development to canon law and its elaborate system of written precedents and.codes, its judicial evidence and its established procedures. The tie which bound the Church and the Law was Latin, the language of all educated people throughout Europe.

  I speak Latin very well. Not as well as Cosimo di Medici but better than Cossa, who coarsened every language he spoke with a brutalizing Neapolitan accent.

  Bishop Tomacelli, however, was the ultimate Neapolitan; so he had the ultimate accent. He was so devious as to be almost invisible. He was consecrated as a cardinal in 1384, and thereby was in a position to encourage the Bologna government's; appreciation of Cossa's gifts by making sure that Cossa; was invited to the only three dinners which he gave, as cardinal, in Bologna, over a two-year period. At these dinners Cossa was seated at his right hand.

  When Tomacelli was elected pope on 11 November 1389, taking the name of Boniface IX, Cossa consolidated all that good will and saw that the word was spread among, the politicians of Bologna that he was the new pontiff's `nephew'. When a pope acknowledged someone as his nephew, it was always his illegitimate son. This made Cossa more powerful in the city.

  Gliding forward into his papacy with smoothest affability, Tomacelli reinstated the cardinals whom Urban VI, his predecessor, had ejected, and set to work to win the temporalities of the Church.

  Boniface must be explained because he was the gateway to Cossa's career,, making possible Cossa's highest rank, his great power as a condottiere, and his earliest riches. He brought Cossa together with the young Cosimo di Medici. That friendship was Cossa's ultimate fulfilment, positive and negative, and the substance of his immortality because, when Cossa was dead, it was Cosimo who commissioned Donatello to design, for, eternal placement in the baptistery at Florence, Cossa's tomb, which will honour his memory forever. Cossa in his turn, realized Cosimo's father's dream to gather the finances of the entire Church into one consolidated banking account, which they will retain for ever, you may be sure. Cosimo di Medici loved Cossa. He respected Cossa because he had had to use him so badly in his secret way. I think that speaks well for Cosimo. Other men, having used Cossa like that, would have had to detest him.

  As soon as Tomacelli was made pope, he welcomed the overtures of the throne of Naples, which had paid him a fortune over the years; he sent a cardinal to Gaeta to anoint and crown the new king, young Ladislas. From that day hence it was the policy of the King of Naples to support the pope at Rome, without question, ignoring the ot
her pope at Avignon.

  Boniface sat down most agreeably with the noble families of the papal states: Este, Montfeltre, Malatesta, Alidosi, Manfredi and Ordelaffi. He convinced them that it would be to their best advantage if, they acknowledged his overlordship. Then, with ineffable bland patience, he persuaded Rome itself to abandon republican independence and to admit his full dominion. The Vatican was fortified. The papal states were rearmed and fully reinstated to their former strengths:

  Although Boniface was one of the most successful popes ever to fill the chair of St Peter (from an: executive standpoint, for he took an enfeebled Church and remade it into a magnificent piece of machinery his success required much: money to reach fruition – more money by half than the Church had. For there was another. pope, Clement VII, commanding separate allegiances at Avignon, exacting his dues and tithes (and more) from his part of the obedience of Christendom. The deep schismatic wound of the Church had a mournful history. The popes had been in France for eighty-four years, but the actual schism which had produced two popes simultaneously had begun with Urban VI, Bonifaces' immediate predecessor.

  I am not an ignorant man, as you have seen plainly since the beginning of this narrative. One would have immediately supposed that Cossa was highly educated and that I was untrained. But I educated myself. I used books. I studied Cossa's books and I insisted on being the only one to drill him in his studies because; had I not educated myself, he would have outgrown me and even the small influence such as I had with him would have been greatly diminished. But, further than the fact that I knew the law without being privy to its honours, I was better educated than Cossa because the only history he cared about was military history and whatever Church history was required to get his diploma.

  I devoured history. Everything about history depended on money. It was the money which made the history; so I tried hard to understand money while not expecting to get any of it. Cossa, having so much of it, never had to study money. He took it for granted and, no matter how much he had, he always needed more.

  6

  If there is anybody within 5000 miles of where I am writing this who hasn't heard about the schism in the only Church they'll ever have, I don't believe it. But maybe if I wrap this manuscript well and hide it

  in a good place, somebody will read this story a hundred years iron now and maybe they won't remember what started the whole schism which spilt their Church in half and was also very bad for business.

  This is how the schism happened and how the papacy was moved from Rome to France.

  In 1292, when Nicholas IV passed into God's fullest grace, there was a deadlock in the sacred college for twenty-seven months before his successor could be elected, and even then it happened by a cruel trick. There were only nine cardinals left in that college and only three of those were independent, the others were either Orsini or Colonna. Pope Nicholas had been an Orsini. The Orsini would not accept the loss of the papacy but the Colonna were determined to take it away from them, and you may be sure that the three remaining cardinals were unwilling to offend either family, both of whom had wilfully scattered murder throughout the streets of Rome.

  The cardinals disputed who should be elected pope until the plague came to Rome, and they withdrew to the mountains of Perugia, still deadlocked.

  One of the neutrals – a cardinal who was neither an Orsini nor a Colonna – was Cardinal Gaetani; the greatest canon lawyer of his time. He was a cold, pinguescent man whose height was such that he could tower over everyone (except me, had I been there). He carried his weight as daintily as a hippopotamus; he had eyes like knives, the determination of an assassin, and delicate hands.

  To break the deadlock in his own devious way, Gaetani told Latino Malabranca, Cardinal of Ostia – therefore the senior cardinal that he had received a `letter of fire' from a holy hermit, Peter of Morone, which prophesied the vengeance of God upon all of them if a pope were not soon elected.

  This was July 1294. Malabranca was a very religious fellow. He took the forgery which Gaetani had handed him with devout seriousness. He prayed. He contemplated. Then, on 5 July, he summoned the handful of cardinals, read them the letter which he believed had come from the holy hermit; demanding a vote instantly, he was so carried away by his own visions that he cried out, `In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I elect brother Peter of Morone.' The deadlock was broken by the logic of demonstrating to Colonna and Orsini alike that neither of them needed to prevent the other from winning.

  Not that the cardinals of either family bothered to make the journey to Abruzzi to meet the new pope, to kiss his feet as ever tradition of the sacred college required. But, it, being only the villain of every piece who is certain of what he wants, Cardinal Gaetani did go to Abruzzi to pay his homage. With him were the King of Naples and an enormous following of ordinary people. In a bleak cave in the Abruzzi mountains, Gaetani told the holy hermit that he had been made Vicar of Christ on earth. The confused frightened old man, who had never seen so many people in his life, nodded to the statement because Gaetani had bellowed at him from that great height, in those rich and beautiful scarlet robes covering that barrel' chest and hogshead belly, commanding that Peter now nod his head to signify his acceptance of God's glory. Emaciated, hardly understanding Latin, much less the condition, Peter accepted the rulership of Christendom filled with mortal terror because he would have to leave his cave. He refused to go to Rome. He would rule from Naples. At Gaetani's, suggestion, he chose the name Celestine V. From that day forward, Gaetani served the pope as his lawyer and soothed him by creating a replica of the hermit's mountain cell in the Castel Nuovo, which had become the Lateran palace of Naples.

  Celestine belonged to an order called the Spiritualists, who now brought terrible pressure upon him to bring pure love to the world. Gaetani saw to it that the tough, cynical bureaucrats of the curia jockeyed around the new pope.

  Gaetani's consideration in duplicating, Celestine's cold, wet mountain cave within the Castel Nuovo was a hidden speaking tube which he had installed in the ceiling of the cell. Deep in the night, while Celestine prayed for divine guidance, Gaetani sat at the working end of the tube and, in the sepulchral tones which soared out of that great belly, warned his pope to abdicate the throne or face the flames of hell. After suffering the agonies of several nights of this, the poor old man turned to his eminent lawyer. Gaetani, lot advice on how such an abdication could be arranged. Piously Gaetani piloted his client's request through dangerous legal shoals.

  The news leaked out. There was an uproar. Along with his consuming fear that if he didn't get out before he died he would be damned to an eternity in hell, Celestine had to cope with the ferocities of his fellow Spiritualist monks, who knew the abdication would prevent the long-awaited reign of eternal love and take away from them their new privileges. They stirred up the populace of Naples until the king afraid that the capital of Christendom would leave Naples as a result of the abdication, battered upon the old man to change his mind.

  Celestine pretended to reconsider, while Gaetani's legal machinery ground on, but fifteen weeks after his coronation the miserable, addled old man summoned his last consistory and read out the prepared deed of renunciation to his cardinals. Slowly, to favour his old legs, he descended from the throne and stripped himself of his imprisoning robes.

  Gaetani was elected to the papacy ten days later, as the compromise candidate, taking the name of Boniface VIII. His first act as pope was to order the arrest of Celestine, whom he sentenced to death.

  Boniface VIII was consecrated and crowned at St Peter's in Rome. He witnessed the archdeacon throw the scarlet robe over him, confer his papal name and declare, `I invest you with the Roman Church.' Boniface was seated upon the sedes stercoraria, a true night commode, so that all would see that their pope was demonstrating I Kings 2.8: `He raiseth up the poor out of the dust and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill to set them among princes:'

  Boniface had burdened himself wit
h many nephews to allay his agony as a spiritual ruler, which was although the papal range was greater than any king's that he was denied the right to transmit his power and his possessions to his children. He acquired rich cities and contiguous, territories in the name of Gaetani. One quarter of the revenue of his reign was poured into buying these. His dynastic ambitions began to shove the great families to one side. Inevitably, he had to confront the Colonna, who ruled their domain from the hilltop city of Palestrina, twenty-two miles east of Rome.

  The Colonna took their case against Boniface to the common people, instilling the belief that his election could not have been legal because it had been secured by the people's loss of heaven on earth when Pope Celestine, chosen of the Holy Ghost, had been usurped by him. They might have won with that argument, but Stephen Colonna raided and sacked a column of the pope's gold which was being sent to Caserta to buy yet another city for the Gaetani dynasty. Boniface, almost insane with rage, jailed two of the Colonna cardinals.

  The Colonna offered to return the gold but Boniface wanted not only revenge on Stephen Colonna: but to install garrisons inside the chief Colonna cities. To the Colonna, papal garrisons would be Gaetani garrisons. At dawn the next day, Colonna heralds posted manifestos attacking the legitimacy of Boniface's election all over Rome, leaving one tacked to the high altar of St, Peter's. That evening, Boniface issued the bull In excelso throno, which expanded savagely upon the injuries the papacy had received at Colonna hands. It excommunicated the two imprisoned Colonna cardinals and every member of the cardinals' branches of the family unto the fourth generation. He charged them with heresy and, by putting them beyond the law, identified them as legitimate prey for all who could overcome them. By mid-August he had extended this to include all Colonnas. In November, he proclaimed a religious crusade against the Colonna, using money from all over Europe which had been intended to finance the Crusades in the Holy Land to buy the Knights Templar to crush the Colonna strongholds, The Colonna women and children: were thus to be killed or sold into slavery. By the summer of 1298, all the Colonna cities had fallen except Palestrina. Boniface offered a pardon for everyone it they would yield the city. When the Colonna agreed and surrendered, Boniface destroyed Palestrina. It was not a token destruction such as the demolition of a short section of the city's wall; Palestrina was razed to the ground, and the hideous Roman ritual of the plough and the salt was re-enacted to leave the place eternally barren. The Colonna went to France in exile.