HERE LIES
THE FAMILY OF
CARLO PENDINI
TAKEN BY THE PLAGUE
`That should keep any ghouls out,' Cossa said.
'See?' I told him as we stumbled off to our horses for the ride back to Bologna. `You couldn't have done it without me.'
8
In 1390 the Duke of Santa Gata. attended his son's graduation from the University of Bologna. Cossa was, twenty-three years old, a leading student of his class, the most potent factor in the university life of his time, and a notable figure, in Bolognese politics. He was seated in the magisterial chair, the book of law was handed to him, the gold ring was slurped upon his finger, the lawyer's biretta put upon his head, and he was pronounced a Doctor Utriusque Juris. He had entered an order of intellectual nobility which had as distinct and definite a place in the hierarchical system of Christendom as the priesthood or the knighthood. The duke, smiling the family smile, expressed his enormous pleasure that Cossa was now ready for his life, and told us that Pope Boniface IX had named his brilliant son to be Archdeacon of the University of Bologna and Chancellor of the University (from. which Cossa had graduated about eleven minutes before). `It was his own idea,' the duke said. `He summoned me to an audience and he explained that as an archdeacon you would be starting your career in the Church as a prelate, no less. Naturally, it wasn't free. I had to pay a hundred florins for such a benefice, which you and I will share equally after you have paid me back the hundred florins. You should be able to earn that back in the first two years.'
With the greatest of ease, Cossa made the job earn the money back in the first eight months. He made administrative changes. No one could be graduated without his consent. He controlled all examinations and their results. Only he had the power to confer the licences without which graduates could not teach practise law throughout the world. He reorganized all university systems beginning with student lodgings. He instituted: a chair-leasing tradition in the classrooms, a `head tax' upon each student, annual fees for `materials and certificates', examination fees, and, a charge for `the review of graduation applications', as well as a final fee for the processing of licences to practise. The, curia allowed him to keep 35 per cent of all the money he collected biannually and, at the end of his first year as archdeacon, Cossa received the congratulations of the pope for the fine work he was doing to raise university standards. At the end of the second year, Cossa instituted a `field privileges' system which permitted senior students to gain experience in drawing up wills, land deeds and contracts to be certified by the chancellor's office after the payment of a graduated-scale of fees to the university. His executive ability, as well as the audible appreciation of the Church for his leadership, bound him even closer than before to the Bologna City Council.
Mysteriously (we thought at the time), the Medici bank in Bologna let the council know that Cossa came from `a famous family of warriors' in Naples,, and within a short time he was appointed a deputy commander, under the old Duke of Este, of the Bolognese military, such as they were at the time. Cossa won fame as a soldier for his leadership of the successful massacre at Rocco di Estia, which eliminated a pocket of troublemakers who had refused to pay taxes. Cossa enjoyed leading troops. He was as good at it, as he was at everything else: his secret was that everything he did was important to him when he did it, before he did it and after he did it. The Church, wars and women exemplified this talent.
I have had many opportunities to talk to Cossa over the years about the feverish nature of his relations with women and, essentially, our debate all came down to this. I would point out to him – for instance, after he became pope – that love was God's, and that the proper place for fornication and sodomy, with their burden of sin, was marriage; they had not been designed for constant promiscuous pleasure. I reasoned with him within the tenets of his own religion (which was not mine) that every golden moment of the Christian existence had to measure up to the profound philosophical preconceptions and prejudices of its founding fathers. Using the trick of his sweet smile which even though I fully understood its use, I could not resist – he would answer me that, because religious and secular law were practically one tissue, the 'morality' of sex had become imbedded in religious law. Having created-guilt and blamed it on Adam and Eve, the founding fathers of the Church saw that the easiest way to remind people of their guilt was by putting restraints on all human pleasures. He told me, patiently, that the `morality' of sex was, therefore, an important factor in social control. He admired the founding fathers for having had the genius to separate sexual relationships from all other human relationships, then to give sex a permanent stain of inner-felt unholiness. But, he said, God or nature has a far stronger influence over us than the ambitions of clergymen, and God insists that the most, important act of our lives is to reproduce ourselves. This desire to do the right thing in God's eyes is so strong in us – certainly in me, he said, it may be different with you Germans – that it cannot be overcome by slanted doctrines from covetous minds.
He became angry with Bernaba during the first year he was chancellor because she said he should allow her to send women to him – he most certainly had received carnally other wives and daughters of Bologna- and that he should stay away from Castelleto Street because it just didn't look right for a man of his dignity, an archdeacon as well as chancellor, and therefore a promising prelate of the Church, to be seen by students entering and leaving a whorehouse. They got into a hot argument over that. Bernaba was a woman of strong character and she recognized no difference between herself and Cossa – or anyone else. Cossa told her to run her whores and keep her advice to herself, so she called. him as stupid donkey and he told Palo to take her outside and beat her. Palo started to get her, but I stepped on his feet, and when he fell down I stumbled over him somehow and tell on his head with my knees, somewhat heavily. Bernaba enjoyed it but it made Cossa even angrier.
`Listen,' I told him, 'Bernaba is one of the oldest friends we have. We don't want anyone – particularly Palo – getting the idea that he can beat her.' I stared at him until he got the point. At last he smiled and said, `I'm sorry. I just lost my temper. It's been a long day.'
She ran across the room, put her arms around him and gave him a big kiss. `Just stay out of Castelleto Street,' she told him. `I'll send you all the women you can handle. You're the chancellor. You have to, give a good impression.'
They were pals again,; but, some years later, when I married Bernaba, she wanted our marriage to be kept secret. `Listen, Franco,' she said tome, `Cossa thinks you are only alive to serve him. He would break all the furniture if we told him.'
`My God, Bernaba,' I said. `How can I keep a secret from Cossa?'
`There is one easy way to do it, Franco. Keep remembering that he is capable of sending me to his father to be sold in the slave market at Bari. He is a nice man. But why should he know?'
I must explain how I can write down this history of my friends or autobiography, depending on how you see it. It would be too easy to allow my own life to dominate this narrative. But this is Cossa's story. I have the feeling that Church history isn't going to deal well with Cossa, but we have to remember that, for all his gestures of action, Cossa was a passive fatalist who allowed things to happen to him. Villains are never like that. Villains always know what they want and they, move to get it. There were villains on every side of Baldassare Cossa and not all of them inside the Church.
I have known Cosimo di Medici almost as long as I have known Cossa. Cosimo was a few years younger than Cossa, Boniface I was ten years older than Cossa, and I was senior to all of them. Cosimo is a banker so, he doesn't talk much unless he needs something, or its plotting something, but he has told me plenty. After I became a cardinal everybody wanted to tell me everything they knew. It's a kind of bragging on their part. The ones who knew the most about things which should be buried deep in the ground were Bernaba's friend Decima Manovale and her four daughters. The daughters told Manovale and
Manovale told Bernaba.
Bernaba was my wife for over twenty years. She is dead now. Bernaba was in a business which gave her the keys to a lot of closets. Some things she didn't tell me until the year she died. She wasn't concealing anything. Whatever I asked her, she told me. After most of the people in our lives were gone, I knew everything she knew about them before I wrote this book.
For example, Decima Manovale. When Cosimo's father began to take an interest in Cossa, Manovale told Bernaba about it. That is so long ago that, at the time, the Medici was only the third, ranking bank in Florence after the Bardi and the Albizzi. The Bardi were ruined by loans they made to the English crown. The Albizzi favoured the rich. So the Medici had no choice but to go after the business of the middle classes and the poor, and that wasn't easy. Cosimo's father was the most ambitious man in Europe. His son was just a son when he started in the bank, and he couldn't really make much of himself until his father died… By that time, they were the biggest bank in the world. The old man was called Giovanni di Bicci di Medici. He worked every corner. He operated farms, manufactured silk, traded with, Europe; Russia and Islam, which was against the Church law – but his ruthless ambition was some day to become the banker for the Church.
Cosimo di Medici told Manovale's daughter Maria Giovanna that his father's obsession with Church banking dated from the day when he found out from some country.bankers in Cahors that the papal treasury at Avignon had 18,000,000 gold florins and 7,000,000 more worth of plate and jewellery on deposit with them. Gold florins were the most desirable currency in Europe. One gold florin was worth three and a half English pounds and old man Medici probably considered all of it to be family money because it was named after the republic of Florence.
Cosimo di Medici's father's one overwhelming desire was to attract the Church's banking away from the different Sienese, Roman, Venetian and foreign banks into one central depository, of all Church income and capital controlled by him,, because he believed that those other banks didn't understand how to use the power of such an opportunity.
The Church was the great industry of Christendom. Its bankable deposits flowed not only from the Vatican but also from the holy sees and religious orders, and from the obediences of the princes who were dependent upon the Church and that meant all of them. The old man used to get furious (Cosimo told Manovale who told Bernaba who told me) because nobody seemed; o realize that the Church income and capital should be centrally organized.
Giovanni di Bicci di Medici had another, invisible, advantage. The papal tax-collecting organization naturally favoured Italian employees, for this established and maintained the predominance of Italian banks throughout Europe. Even business in and around the North Sea and the Baltic was largely financed by them. He kept repeating to his son that if one bank had everything the Church deposited. any pope could be made content, even happy, and the bank therefore could, prosper beyond anything any banker (except Giovanni di Bicci di Medici)' had ever dreamed of. With a few happy popes leaning on every see, every prince, every religious order, to bank with one single bank's branches – which would be conveniently located everywhere, – a banker could have a really flourishing business…
Therefore, Cosimo di Medici's father was always redrawing his mental maps to try to create new alleys or highways which could lead to financial influence with any pope, however casual the approaches might seem to be. That explained the Medici: interest in Cossa, a young churchman, on the way up who might provide some levers.
The Medici baking branch in Bologna gathered and passed along to the head office in Florence raw information, even gossip, about what was happening in the city The Medici were keener than most governments on intelligence operations., The Bologna branch routinely reported the new organization of whores and the baratterie, but their operations were so expertly shielded, (by me) that, at first, the Medici weren't able to find out who had created the whole thing. But they kept trying. Florence was interested in people who had an instinct about money and knew how to make it. It took the Bologna branch a long time to find out that Cossa was the man. Luigi Palo probably took some money to tell them.
When Cosimo's father knew that a mere law student at the university – and a student of canon law at that – was responsible, he was so impressed that he told his son to work with the Bologna branch on building up a running file on Cossa. Cosimo had to find the right man at the Vatican from whom to buy Cossa's record, and the man just happened to be Piero Spina, then still a protonotary apostolic (who was still searching for Bernaba and the man who had broken his nose, even though he had no idea who that roan was), which could put people in awe of the combinations God plays with.
When the Medici read the Vatican file, they had two sets of information, not exactly matching. The Vatican file said Cossa was a prize student who had a future in the Church, that he was the eldest son of the Duke of Santa Gata, and – interesting to old man Medici – from a line-of pirates and slavers. They put this together with the information about organizing the whores and the gambling houses and his bribery of the rectors of the student unions, which had created local political influence, and they liked what they read. So they, instructed their branch manager in Bologna to have a quiet conversation with Bolognese city councilmen and remind them that Cossa would be the next Duke of Santa Gata an impressive matter to politicians – and that he should be considered for the job of one of the Duke of Este's commanders of the Bologna military Therefore, and not at all as mysteriously as Cossa thought, it happened that, while continuing as chancellor of the university, (and with the permission of Rome), Cossa had become a condottieri leader while Cosimo's father continued his plotting to move him into the Vatican. The invisible can cast long shadows.
One afternoon while Cossa was working out a series of complicated positions in a fleshy pile with Enrichetta and two new girls from Lucca, a letter arrived from the pope, summoning him to Rome. He lost all interest in completing the coilings within the coilings. When the women had gone, he said to me (I had been keeping notes on and, sketching the more impossible couplings), `Read this. What the hell can he want?'
`He wants to promote you.'
'It doesn't work that way, Franco. If he wanted to transfer me upstairs, I'd get word from the bishop here and the bishop of wherever they're sending me.'
`Correct. Except that the bishop who is going to get you outranks the bishop here. What is the pope? He is the Bishop of Rome.' Jesus.' he said, `suppose they have worked out who took the gold from them at Fossombrone?'
'How could they work it out? It went into a hole at Castrocaro. How could they trace it to you? And if they did, they'd dispatch a squad of soldiers to pick you up; they wouldn't send you a flowery letter.,
`I'd hate to walk into a trap.'
'Cossa, please! Don't pretend to have suddenly discovered that you have a conscience. Who do you want to come with us?'
`Leave Father Fanfarone` here. He might be arrested as an enemy agent if he ever fell into conversation with a real priest at the Vatican. Bocca, of course – but only Bolognese and Venetian food. No Neapolitan food. Palo stays here to protect the business. Lay on a bodyguard. We'll leave tomorrow morning.'
9
In his lifetime – beginning with his cousins on Procida – Cossa, seduced 317 matrons, virgins, widows, circus performers and nuns that I know of. That figure does not include courtesans, except for my wife. He was a healthy man who had a natural view of women. The way Cossa looked at it, he needed everything he got. -
Out of the 317, only two were important to him, involved with him mystically and emotionally. We met the first woman on that journey from Bologna to Rome to see the pope.
As we rode away from, Bologna, Cossa kept saying he was tired, which meant he was still worried about whether the pope had found out who took the gold. When we arrived at Perugia, about halfway, he was welcomed, as the chancellor of the university, to stay at the house maintained by the Duke of Milan for official travellers. He told me
to take care of the horses, to have my dinner with whom I chose, and to call him at dawn for the journey to Rome.
The next-day he told me what happened, to him after that. He was walking in the garden to consider the best time to take the gold safely out of the ground at Castrocaro, when he heard someone close by call him by name. He turned and saw a beautiful woman with commanding red hair whose eyes, he said, were painted with lust. When he left her bed at dawn the next day, Cossa was insane with love. When I finally forced my way into the room after exhorting him through the door, pleading that the pope was waiting for him, he was dressed, wearing chest armour with weapons strapped to his person so that even if he were, to be overcome with the need to mount the woman again, it would be too painful a possibility for both of them. But it became even more of an impossibility for him to separate from her without one more go so he tore off the armour and loosed his manhood from its cradle of chainmail and leaped upon her again with such incredible speed that had not the time to stop him; he was thrusting and grunting while she cried out as if in excruciating pain, which I knew could not be the case.
A Trembling Upon Rome Page 5