A Trembling Upon Rome

by Richard Condon

  The procession rode solemnly through the streets of Pisa. The two rival pope's were burned in effigy. The Jews; as was traditional, met the pope as he rode and petitioned for a confirmation of their privileges. They presented him with a book of their law, which he was required to throw backwards over his shoulder, saying that he had a better law as his guide. Arriving at his palace, the pope dismounted and the Captain of Pisa took the mule and its trappings as his perquisite.

  On the last day of the council, on the, authority of God, St Peter and St Paul; and on his own authority, Alexander bestowed plenary absolution upon all who had attended the council, and on the

  servants who had been with them, and this was to avail up to the hours of their deaths.

  28

  Three months after the accession of Pope Alexander V, after he had established his own curia out of nothing, had implemented the arms of the Church – organizing department after department where there had been no apparatus whatever before – Cossa sent me to Milan with a message to Catherine Visconti, asking her to entrust to me her choice of a meeting place in three months' time.

  He had much work to do before he could meet her to settle anything. On 1 October, he led the pope's armies and allied troops under the command of the Duke of Anjou and entered Rome, where he took possession of the Vatican after driving Ladislas south, back to Naples. It had been six years since Cossa was in Rome. Those years had formed him into the greatest cardinal of Urbanist obedience. He had originated and engineered the Council of Pisa, had secured the election of, a holy man to the papacy, and was himself the power behind the papal throne.

  Cossa's accomplishment in recreating in Bologna all the machinery formerly at Rome had been a vast executive achievement. To begin with, although delegations of city magistrates and leading citizens came to him with rich gifts to plead that he persuade the pope to return the papacy to Rome, and although he knew Alexander was much inclined to that, Cossa was against it. He listened to the committees gravely, and accepted their gifts with sensitive regard for their motives, but he had no intention of permitting Alexander to go to Rome to stand at the mouths of Ladislas's cannon. Also, he had much in mind the many commercial enterprises which he, the marchesa and Cosimo di Medici controlled in Bologna which were enhanced, b, the presence of the papacy and the curia. It became necessary for him to remind Alexander of his promise, on election, to work for the recovery of the papal states. Bologna was Cossa's fief, so it would have to do for the old man as well. Without further murmur, Alexander settled luxuriously into Bologna with his immense retinue of female servants, holy, happy and unhorrified.

  Alexander was an old man without experience of papal affairs. He never understood that he was a prisoner of the papacy. He devoted himself to holy worship,, undertaking every imaginable ritualistic chore and carrying the people of Bologna and all pilgrims along wide him in his daily exhibitions of belief, which were as necessary to the collective spirit as the inner nourishment of, its faith. As he lived only to worship his God with the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Mother and the saints, he welcomed Cossa's vigour and intelligence and the experience of churchcraft and statecraft which he brought to the papacy. To outsiders, it appeared that a scramble by the cardinals for offices and privileges had begun, but these benefits were stringently controlled by Cossa and shared only with those who had acted in support of his wishes at the Council of Pisa.

  Early in March 1410, when he was sure that the machinery of the Church was working smoothly, that the cardinals knew who their master was, Cossa slipped away to a palace at Mirandola, between Ferrara and Parma, which Gian Galeazzo had acquired in his labours: of some years before. It was called the Castello di Natale – it was the birthplace of the Duke of Rusconi – and Catherine Visconti had chosen it as a well-hidden meeting place with Cossa.

  She was waiting when he arrived. The servants were dismissed and they made love vigorously before they prepared for dinner. After dinner they began the slow, deliberate process of working out the treaty they would hold with each other.

  `I cannot explain how high my heart lifted when I was brought the news that you had rejected the papacy,' she said. 'I knew that I was saved and that my children were saved. What enormous courage and strength you had to tell the conclave that you would not accept their summons, and I cannot tell you how much I recognize what you have done for me – for us – so that you may come to our alliance with an open heart.'

  'My heart is open to you,' he said. `We will move Europe, but not until I have seen to my duty to Alexander and have set his house entirely in order so that the Church may function and prosper. There

  are obligations to cardinals and to princes which I must meet but,

  within six months from this day, we will join our intentions, reclaim your sons from those who would subvert them; and begin the expansion of the state of Milan.'

  `How much money should I have ready for you?'

  `There will be a matter of gifts within the Church no need to persuade the pope so, but each cardinal should understand that any own place as a prince of the Church must not be disturbed. The bankers must be given assurances that we will favour them and that we, will not threaten what they hold now, after we begin to expand. We shouldn't forget that there are princes and churchmen at our flanks and backs outside Italy requiring that we remember them with gold florins. Naturally, the state of Milan must pay to raise the condottieri necessary for the conquest, but it can do so with the loans from cooperative banks until we may realize the returns of war. Therefore, for immediate capital, if you will have twenty thousand gold florins ready in two months' time, I will send my man Franco Ellera for it.'

  'And what do you give to our alliance?' she asked.

  `No money. I have only a simple soldier's purse,' he said with a straight face. `But I have given my chance of papacy to our dream and, by leaving the pope to join you in conquest, I may be losing my red hat.'

  They walked slowly along the high terrace behind the fortress walls of the castle and each was fulfilled by what they foresaw. Catherine had a warrior in her bed once again. Her children could now be prevented from turning upon her. She would preserve Milan for the Visconti and grind into the dust every one of her husband's commanders who had turned on her after Gian Galeazzo had fallen. Cossa could now be certain that he would spend the rest of his life as a great condottieri general, while showing respect to his father's ambition by remaining a, high churchman. He would use Catherine's money to ensure that the pope appointed him Archbishop of Milan and that no one in the-hierarchy would see fit to object to that. He would be rich from the loot of Italy, Baldassare, Cardinal-General-Archbishop, while the marchesa began to soften up the electors with a view to making him King of the Romans when Rupert was dead. At no point in his considerations of his future could he imagine functioning without the marchesa. He needed her cunning. He could not proceed beyond Italy without her experience and knowledge of Germany, France, Spain and England. He would need all her craft to divert Sigismund of Hungary from ideas, of competing with him, perhaps going to war against him,, to stop him from being crowned Holy Roman Emperor. All this was in Cossa's mind when he sealed his treaty with Catherine Visconti with two glorious nights in his bed.

  He had about as much chance of being made King of the Romans and all, the rest of it as he had of being elected the most holy churchman in all history. He couldn't get enough of the woman, so he tied to himself about the other things. He wanted to be Alexander's first cardinal in charge of everything in the Church, and that was what he was.

  29

  I was as unaware as Cossa was of the dangers he had created by refusing the papacy. Neither the Medici, his great, sponsors, nor the marchesa trusted him any longer. The signs must have been there to sense these things, then to prove them, then to convince Cossa of the danger, but I suspected nothing. Business was better than ever.

  Cosimo di Medici was aware that Cossa had slipped away to a secret meeting with Catheri
ne Visconti because the Marchesa di Artegiana had kept Cossa under perpetual surveillance ever since the evening he had, told her he would not accept the papacy. His betrayal of all she had done to secure the papacy for him (and the Medici) had been a severe shock because she could not puzzle out who had helped him to arrive at such a wildly destructive decision. She was confident that Cossa, left on his own, would have done as he, was told and agreed to become pope, always providing; that he had what looked like the lion's share. Someone had managed to get close enough to tamper with him. Someone had made him what had looked at the time like a better offer.

  The Marchesa had reasoned her way through the maze. She decided that, if Cossa had met secretly or otherwise with anyone, it would have happened at some time during the five weeks between her leaving him in the field and her return to confer with him again. When she had left, he had been growing more and more enthusiastic about the plan to make him pope. He had cross-questioned her about the tactics for, handling the, cardinals and princes in Pisa, frequently correcting the strategy and. improving upon it, always having a sure touch for designing bribes. Whatever had occurred had occurred during that five-week period, and the Marchesa realized that the only person who could reveal whom Cossa had spoken to was me.

  She understood me too well to ask such things directly, so she went to Bernaba and explained what Cossa had done to cheat them all, and principally himself, out of vast fortunes and the papacy. To Bernaba, next to the money involved, the papacy was the crowning jewel of mankind, and, since she knew Cossa, as well as she did, she wanted the papacy for him; she was even able to construct a fantasy whereby he, as pope, would become her confessor. She listened to the marchesa's insistence that Cossa would still one day be pope and, admiring popes as she did, loving her husband and not being able to

  imagine how high he would rise if Cossa became pope, admiring the marchesa more than any ruffian in Italy; she naturally agreed to get the information.

  The marchesa was astonished, not jealous, when she weighed up what Bernaba had passed to her from me. Even she thought it was strange that she a dealer in women all her life, had never considered the possibility that another woman could have been the force which had deflected Cossa from the papacy. When she sifted through what 1 had told Bernaba about what they had talked about in that single night which had brought on the great upset in Pisa, she ordered a twenty-four-hour surveillance on Cossa. The barren reports came to her every day, but she was a patient woman who knew that, sooner or later, either Cossa or Catherine Visconti would have to make their move.

  She talked to Cosimo about it: `After all,' she said, `soldiering is his natural bent. The Church, is just an acquired talent. But surely he must know that this woman is a Visconti who will have him

  assassinated as soon as he gets everything done that she wants done.' `Now we know,' Cosimo said, `but it's too late. Filargi is the pope.' 'It certainly is not too late,' the marchesa protested. `What can we do?'

  `Filargi is an old man.'

  `Old men die.,' If this old man dies, then I, say it becomes your problem to make sure that Cossa will accept at the next conclave.' `That is too indefinite for my father, Decima.' 'Perhaps it can be made definite.'

  How do you mean? No, no! Don't tell me.' He held up both hands before himself in alarm, his face grown pale. 'We have never spoken of this.'

  'I have studied hard how to bring pressure on Cossa to make him accept. I have worked out the single uncontestable solution in this world. You, will easily be able to, persuade Cossa to be pope.' 'How?'

  She told him how, and irrevocably – although I did not know it until much later – they became my enemies.

  Since the day she had brought him the good news, the marchesa had lunched every Friday with the pope at his palace. She brought him delicious gossip from the world; titbits which her daughters had searched out in the corners of all the high places in Europe, and the sweet old pope was enormously entertained by the merry innocence of it all. Gossip was not all she brought with her. She brought powders which she had commanded since her earliest days as a ruffian, when young women had come to her crying for vengeance against men whose lives they wished to put away without suspicion being cast upon themselves. Between the peals of his laughter and the sips of his, wine, the marchesa palmed her potions into his drink and poisoned Pope Alexander V to death. This I know, for I was in the room when she admitted it.

  30

  On 2 May 1410, Cossa and I were in Forlimpopolo, beyond Forli on.the way to Ravenna, besieging 200 horse and 200 foot of Ladislas's stragglers, when he was recalled to Bologna because the pope was dying. When we reached the papal palace, Alexander was sinking fast. Cossa didn't go into the sick room to see the pope immediately. On the way to his apartments, he found a committee of senior cardinals waiting for him in the anteroom. Covered with dust and wearing war gear, he excused himself. I went into the pope's room, and spoke to the doctors, then I went to Cossa, in his apartment, and said, `The pope is finished and the word is out.'

  'What does that mean?'

  `It means that couriers' have come in to say that Pierre D'Ailly and the Duke of Burgundy are on their way from France, and John of Nassau is coming from Mainz.'

  `How did they find out the pope was dying that far away.'

  `He's been ill for about three weeks. Now we know he's dying.'

  'There is something very odd going on here,' Cossa said.

  'That's not all. Cosimo di Medici is on his way from Florence.'

  'What do they all want, for Christ's sake?'

  'On the surface it's a crisis, isn't it? I mean, in a sense, it's the natural thing to do. They are running out of popes. They have to keep up the inventory.'

  `Help me out of this gear. Tell those old farts to come in here in ten minutes. Tell them I'm having a bath.' As an afterthought he said, 'Every one of them has been bribed to the hairline.'

  `After Pisa last year, you should know,' I told him.

  When the committee came in, Cossa was ready for them. As ready as he would ever be, I thought. While he was dressing, he had told me he was soaked by a premonition of loss, except that he hadn't lost anything. He said he was trying to think of Catherine Visconti and the Milan gold which would buy him all the condottieri he needed to bring him to power in Italy, then make him perhaps King of the Romans, then perhaps Holy Roman Emperor: I didn't laugh at him. It was real to him. But he said that even that beautiful thought wouldn't stay with him because he knew the cardinals and the bankers and the princes wanted to make him pope.

  He greeted the cardinals as they entered the room and apologized for keeping them waiting. They rumbled their acknowledgements. There were four of them: Jean de Brogny, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, most senior; Antonius Calvus,; Cardinal of Mileto; Pierre Gerard, Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum; Ladulfus Maramaur, Cardinal Deacon of San Nicolo in Cacere Tulliano, a Neapolitan. They were quite accustomed to having me at all meetings. Privately, they called me the Witness.

  `His Holiness grows weaker and weaker,' de Brogny said:' `An excellent man in the whole course of his life, gifted in sweetness and prayer. But he has very few hours left.'

  `He shines with goodness,' Cossa said.

  `Cossa, in a few hours your Church will need you,' Maramaur said in the Neapolitan dialect. Cossa stared at him coldly. He began to feel the stirrings of panic. He had; been about to begin his march upon the conquest of Italy but these old men were going to insist upon something else for him.

  `Soon there will be a conclave,' de Brogny said. `We must have the assurance of your consent to your election as pope, as should have happened in Pisa.'

  Cossa sat down heavily. `Please – he said, `sit down, my friends.' He took a deep breath as they remained standing in a semi-circle around him. `My reasons are the best reasons,' he said. `I am not fit for the papacy. I lack the holiness.'

  `We will surround you with holiness like high walls,' de Brogny said. 'We will elevate you as upon a cloud which will hold y
ou above all on earth, shining with holiness.'

  'Three would be no one to run the Church.'

  'You will run the Church.' The pope. As it should be.'

  `The Church is in shards,' Antonius Calves said harshly. 'At this moment the Church, must have a leader who is more of a king than a pope. Holiness is the last thing which is required during this terrible confusion of triple schism. We need a strong man who will dispose of two anti-popes where the Council of Pisa and Alexander failed. We need a great lawyer. We need a soldier.'

  `Elect Caracciola.'

  `We choose you.'

  `You are priests,' Cossa said, his voice rising as the Panic inundated him. `I am a lawyer, not a churchman. I am a layman in all but title.'

  `All the more reason!' Maramaur said. `They are pressing us for reform! It is a serious thing! Everyone is after reform, from the King of France to the coalmine owners in Silesia and bankers in Greece. Do we want reform? No, they want it. We have to live with the church on an hour-to-hour basis but they want reform. Reform for the businessman is the end of the schism. Reform for the theologians is something else, but Church reform we can cope with. We have to have a cunning lawyer – you – to stand them off effecting compromises. Can a priest be of any, use at that? What would we do with a pastoral pope at a time like this?'