A Trembling Upon Rome

by Richard Condon

  `Cossa, you rotten Neapolitan shit of Satan, we almost killed ourselves getting the, papacy for you! Cosimo has spent tens of thousands of florins on this. He has wrung gold out of all of the bankers of Europe to put you into the papacy!'

  `Nothing will be wasted,' Cossa answered calmly. 'They are bankers. They want money. By going along with me, they will get their; money and so will you.'

  `What do I tell the cardinals?'

  `The cardinals and I are of one spirit. I will tell them. Even Spina will welcome what I will tell him.'

  She clapped her ivory hand to her porcelain forehead saying, `The deals we will have to unmake! The arrangements which will have to be undone.' Cossa knew he had won. He felt kind and loving towards her.

  `Who will be pope, then?'

  'Pietro Filargi.'

  `Milan? That old man?'

  `He is old but he was once a holy friar. He studied theology at Norwich, Oxford and Paris. He was a, holy hermit on Candia, then his life took him to Lombardy. He became a tutor to Gian Galeazzo's on, then Archbishop of Milan, then a cardinal. He is fond of wine and knows nothing of the business of the curia. He trusts me.' Cossa smiled broadly. `And I insist that it be you who, take the news of his, accession, to him so that all your future clients will realize that you know such things first – before all others – before the inside of the inside. Do you follow me, dear one?'

  `Dear one, my ass, you double-crossing, two-faced son-of a-bitch.'

  26

  When the marchesa left Cossa's bed the next morning, she was affectionate and blandly understanding but, as she rode northwards to Pisa, her mind was hard and her spirit cold. She had been cheated. A tithe of the benefices taken from Cossa as a first cardinal, no matter how much, was far from being a tithe of Cossa's potential share as pope. Standing at the right hand of a first cardinal was no improvement of position for herself or her daughters. She marked that Cossa's excuses for rejecting the papacy were admissions of weakness.

  It was reflexive with the marchesa to exploit weakness. She was determined to control Cossa as pope in exactly the same way that Cossa intended to control Filargi. Cosimo di Medici had many rightful claims to realizing an influence over the papacy, but even his claims were very nearly invalid compared with the rightness of her own claim, because seeing that all Church deposits went into the Medici bank was only a part of what she would control when she controlled Cossa's papacy.

  When she stopped for the night at Siena, she` wrote a letter to Cosimo: It was a harsh, blunt report of what Cossa had told her. She ended the letter with, `It is too late to reverse his decision, so fearful is

  he of sitting on the throne of St Peter. Filargi will be elected. He is an – old, old man. You have my consecrated word that Cossa has not yet escaped the papacy.

  When she reached Pisa, the marchesa sent a letter to her dear friend, the Cardinal Filargi, Archbishop of Milan, asking for an audience. He summoned her to lunch the following day. He was such a hearteningly amiable, crinkly-faced, brown-skinned, toothless old man, she thought. If he had a fault in the world it could only be that he spent half his day at table and maintained a staff of 400 female servants, all clad in his house livery, among whom were four of Bernaba's failed courtesans who kept her informed of what was happening, as a matter of habit.

  As she entered his dining hall, Filargi seemed to be very nearly engulfed by the ministering women. As each did her stint, smiling dotingly; others seemed to appear from trapdoors, crevices, cup-boards and crannies to bring more comforts – cushions, wine, foot stools, hand cream, sweeties and cooling, fans.

  `Praise to God!' the old man cried out from beneath the screens of muffling women. `How wonderful to see you again, my dearest Decima. It is like the wonderful old days in Milan when Gian Galeazzo was still alive, and you and I would lunch so elegantly every Tuesday.' Three young women lifted him to his feet and braced him while he flung open his arms to receive her. After the embrace they lowered him into his chair and settled him down sweetly among the cushions.

  They lunched on busecca alla Milanese, a tripe soup containing – cabbage, tomatoes, celery, beans, onions, potatoes, leeks and crusts of bread, flavoured with saffron, sage, parsley and garlic, and sprinkled with cheese.

  `When I spent that impossibly cold time at Oxford, then an even colder time in Paris which is surely the coldest place on dear God's earth – their faces went blank when I pleaded for this magnificent soup to get myself warm again; and I vowed to St Gregory of s Nazianus (the supreme theologian of the Trinity, but a saint who wrote more than four hundred touchingly beautiful poems – just as this soup is a poem to the living) that I would, if I ever returned to the advanced civilization of Italy, start every meal of my remaining days with busecca alla Milanese. You and I know what is right to set upon a table, my dear. One of the things we were born for was to be each other's eating companion. After the wonderful soup, I have asked for the special sausage, eh? Your favourite and mine, am I right? Where else but in Milan would veal be sliced so thinly, then filled with such infinitesimally chopped veal, pork, ham, breadcrumbs and the cheese of Parma – all bound together with egg yolk and flavoured with garlic and nutmeg, then cooked in butter with a little broth and served in its own dear sauce? Please! We shall drink Virgil's own wine – Rhaetic – red, robust, rich and rewarding Rhaetic from the hills above Verona – such a pleasant change from the heavy wines of Latium.'

  `You will make me fat,' the marchesa protested weakly.

  `Fat is a phase of life,' the cardinal explained. 'I was thin, then God made me fat but, when he grew tired of seeing me fat, he made me thin again. Always the same five meals a day, the same wines, the same sweets… here, here, you lazy girls the marchesa's glass is almost empty.

  They ate and drank. The cardinal talked on and on like a sweet bird perched upon the brow of life singing its praises. As suddenly as he did everything else…, he said, 'Have you come to tell me something, Decima'?'

  She nodded happily.

  `Is it a private matter?'

  She nodded conspiratorially.

  `Lazy girls!' he called to his staff. `Tidy me up, then leave us.' Four liveried young women scrambled forward. Two washed his little hands. A third touched tenderly at his mouth with a soft, damp,

  scented cloth, as the fourth arranged his hair. Then they were gone. He leaned back and nodded to the marchesa. – `I have just returned from Cardinal Cossa's field headquarters,'

  she said. `He entrusted me with a message for you.'

  The old cardinal raised one eyebrow.

  `He is aware that the council and the cardinals – are speaking of him as our next pope.'

  'Ah, that is true, Decima. These are times when a man of Cossa's strength is sorely needed.'

  `Yes. Oh, yes, Eminence. But he spoke most forthrightly to me. He told me that such expectancies as those of the council alarm him because he is not as you are – a holy man. He sees himself only as a man of action, and he is painfully anxious that his experience and abilities as a Church administrator after all that long and careful training under Pope Boniface would be lost if he were to accept the post.’

  `He would refuse?'

  `He wants only to serve God and his pope where God has shown him that he is meant to serve, my Lord. Therefore, because I have his trust and yours, he has asked me to tell you that his support – all of it – will be put behind your candidacy.'

  Filargi stared at her steadily, without expression. His crinkled face with its horny skin made him seem like a gentle lizard upon a rock in the warn sun.

  `Cardinal Cossa wants to serve you,' the marchesa continued simply. `More than anything else, he wants me to make that wholly clear to you. He offers his services to you humbly, as your first cardinal, as your administrator of the curia and the Church through-out Christendom as military protector of your person and of the papal states, as steward and cherisher of the Church's treasures everywhere,; and as the host to your serenity.'

  Two s
mall tears rolled down Filargi's leather cheeks. `Lazy girls,' he called out, `fetch me any jewel chest.' In moments one appeared with an iron-bound chest. He scoured out a key from a hidden pocket of his dress and unlocked the chest set before him. He opened its lid. It was filled with gold jewellery which shone blindly, set with precious stones.

  `My lady; Decima he said with emotion, `I ask you to choose the ornament which most pleases you. You have brought to me that which honours all the dead of my family and which will exalt my spirit: to eternal salvation.'

  Although the marchesa did not hesitate, she did not appear to have considered which jewelled item she would choose, but her ruffian's eye had decided which object would most benefit herself and, her heirs by choosing a gold ring bearing a sapphire as blue as the Virgin's robes within a setting of diamonds.

  `I thank you, my lord,' she said humbly.

  27

  The next session of the Council of Pisa was held on Saturday, 15 June 1409, beginning with the celebration of high mass by Philippe de Thury, Archbishop of Lyons. The sermon was preached by the Bishop of Novara on the appropriate text, Eligite meltorem et eum ponite super soturn, exhorting the cardinals to proceed to the unanimous choice of a good and worthy ruler. This was now necessary because the council had finally deposed both schismatic popes, Gregory and Benedict.

  At vespers, the twenty-four cardinals, including Baldassare Cossa, entered the archbishop's palace, 110 yards west of the leaning tower, and were there immured in conclave under the guard of the Grand Master of Rhodes, and other prelates, not to issue thence until a new pope should have been chosen. Fourteen of the cardinals had belonged to the, obedience of Gregory, ten to that of Benedict.

  Throughout the city, stories of exceptional bribery were rife, that every cardinal had, promised to the servants of others, that the French court had lavished money, that the cousin of the King of France, Louis de Bar, Cardinal of St Agatha, might be chosen, or the 'domestic prophecy' of Cardinal de Thury might be fulfilled, or that Simon de Cramaud, Patriarch of Alexandria, might at last obtain the tiara for which he had sighed so long and worked so ardently.

  Two halls and two chapels were set apart for the conclave in the larger chapel, cells were constructed in which the cardinals might eat and sleep; the smaller was reserved for discussion and for the election of a pope.

  On the first day nothing was done but settle in with greatest comfort. On the fourth day, after sufficient lip service had been paid to the ambitions of the more earnestly yearning cardinals, the conclave turned to Baldassare Cossa. After a result of scrutiny was announced, it was customary for the cardinals to sit and talk together in case any wished to change his mind and transfer the vote he had given to another – for in this way they could more easily reach an agreement. This procedure was omitted after the submission of Cossa's scrutiny.

  Cossa stood before them and addressed his response to the senior cardinal. 'Your Eminence of Ostia,' he said gravely, `your opinion of me, as I understand it, is much higher than my own, when you attribute to me any more than the qualities which should be held by a soldier of the Church: I am not ignorant that our own imperfection is far more, general. I realize that our failings in these crucial days of schism include a lack of vital religious capacities which evolve out of a life of meditation and prayer; something which has not been my lot in my life of action. These failings must declare me to be utterly unworthy. Therefore, with fallen heart over my weaknesses which must bar me from ever reaching the glory of the papacy, we must disobey the summons of the Holy Ghost which was made with your voices.’

  There was a great outburst of protest in the chapel but Cossa quieted this when he said, `If following the dictates of your consciences which seek to heal the wounds suffered from this tragic schism, you will attribute the summons of a single, binding pope, to God Himself, you will cast your eyes about you seeking the holiest man among you. That man of holiness whom we should raise up as pope does indeed sit among us. He is Petrus Filargi, Archbishop of Milan and Cardinal of the Twelve Apostles. Beyond his precious sanctity, I remind you that he is neither Frenchman nor Italian and is by that freedom alone a healing balm for Christendom. He is known by all of us to be an able man and a most active, prelate in the affairs of this historic council. He might not know who were his father or his mother but that will save him from the trouble and temptation of providing for his relatives. He might not be profoundly based in canon and civil law, as he is a scholar of theology, but it was no ordinary man who could win the confidence and trust of that astute tyrant, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Petrus Filargi truly fits the throne of Peter, for he is able, saintly and proven to be incorruptible.'

  The new pope, Petrus Filargi, took the name of Alexander V. The news of his election was received with joy in Milan, Florence and Bologna, but not in Rome, which was occupied by Ladislas's troops.; The election of Cardinal Filargi was also a triumph for France because both he and his chief adviser, Cardinal Cossa, were devoted to the French alliance – that confraternity of French cardinals, the King of France and the papacy which managed to prosper so well.

  Although the Council of Pisa had deposed Popes Gregory and Benedict and had elected Pope Alexander to end the great schism in the Church, there was still much before the council to do. There was the desperate question of Church reform if the council were to satisfy the hopes of Christendom, from Scandinavia to Greece, from England to Warsaw. While the council sat, most of Europe had discussed little else but the. reform of the Church but, until that reform actually happened, the multitudinous Church outside was ruled by a minuscule handful of the Church within the cardinals and the curia, without whom nothing could be done which had to be done.

  The reform for which the Christian world had clamoured for over a century, for which the prelates and priests of the Church in every country but Italy had wanted for perhaps even longer, was many-sided. It involved the elimination of images and pictures from the churches, and an end to the solemnization of new festivals and of the building of yet more sacred edifices. Reform demanded an end to the canonization of saints and the prohibition of all work on feast days. Reform called for an end to simony not only within the papacy, the college and the Curia, but by parish priests who milked their poor parishioners. This Churchly vice had, put many of the faithful under ban of excommunication because they were unable to pay for justice. Corpses lay in the field ‘unhouseled, unannealed, no reckoning made because relatives could not pay priests for a Christian burial. However, despite the continuing demand for Church reform, the Council of Pisa felt that, by electing a new pope, they had done the one-thing which was absolutely needful.

  Catastrophically, the great schism in the Church had not been terminated by the signing of conciliar decrees. Although the council had deposed two popes and had elected one pope, it had not proclaimed in writing to all the nations and to the people that the schism was over.

  This thunderbolt crashed down upon the Church and upon Christendom. To the horror of the world, it soon became clear that merely one more pope had been added to the pope at Perpignan and to the pope who had fled Rome and now lived under the protection of Carlo Malatesta at Rimini. Incredible to Christendom, it was slowly and agonizingly understood that, although most of the prelates of Christendom had laboured mightily over their intentions,, all they had succeeded in doing was to bring one more pope into a world which was already overcrowded with popes.

  All three papacies held their individual obediences in a deathgrip while, relentlessly, they collected their dues and tithes, their spoilias and servitias from the triply split parishes of the, world. Although the latest pope, Alexander V, was obeyed by the greatest part of Christendom, Benedict XIII had the obediences of Spain, Scotland, Sardinia, Corsica and Armagnac. The city-state of Rimini, parts of Germany, and the northern kingdoms were faithful to Gregory XII.

  The twentieth; session of the Council of Pisa opened on 1 July, under the presidency of Alexander V. This was marked by gr
eatly increased solemnity. Cardinal de Thury again celebrated high mass. The pope pronounced the benediction. Those parts of the service which had formerly been taken by a cardinal bishop were now performed by His Holiness. The Orate and the Erigite Vos, instead of being proclaimed by a simple chaplain or deacon; were now pronounced by a cardinal-deacon, and the pope was assisted by cardinals of that rank, including Baldassare Cossa, in white dalmatics and mitres. After the litany, Alexander himself read the remaining prayers and intoned the Veni Creator Spiritus. A, lofty seat, had been placed for him in front; of the, high altar and facing him were the Patriarchs of Alexander, Antioch and Jerusalem.

  After the office had been concluded, the Cardinal of Chalant, assisted by three bishops, ascended the pulpit and published the decree which told that the pope had been unanimously elected by all the cardinals. A prayer for the welfare of the new pontiff and of the Holy Church was then put up, and the pope preached a sermon on the text Fiet unum ovile unus pastor, signifying that there would be one fold and, one shepherd, which was more than slightly in error.

  At the, pope's order, Cardinal Cossa rose and read newly formed decrees which ratified all the business that the cardinals had done from 3 May. The two colleges of cardinals, those formerly of Benedict; and those formerly of Gregory, were amalgamated into a single college. Deposed, the two popes had no ecclesiastical supporters because, as popes, they no longer existed. The next decree related to

  the reformation of the Church in its head and its members. The pope requested that different nations appoint men of probity, age and capacity to consult with him and his cardinals in the matter.

  Sunday 7 July 1409, was fixed for Alexander's coronation: The newest of the three sitting popes assisted by cardinals and prelates in their long pluviales and white mitres, celebrated mass, then emerged from the western door of the cathedral of Pisa to the high throne which had been erected on the steps facing the baptistery. The epistles and the gospel were read in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The triple crown was set upon Alexander's head by the Cardinal of Saluces. Then the, patriarchs, archbishops; bishops and mitred abbots mounted their steeds caparisoned in white cloths and, trappings. Last of all came, the pope on a white mule, wearing full pontificals, with the tiara on his head. The mule was led by Cardinal Cossa.