A Trembling Upon Rome

by Richard Condon

  The marchesa returned to Bologna two days later, taking Maria Louise with her. She joined Cossa and me for dinner at three o'clock in the morning in a small chamber which adjoined the working area in the papal palace and paid out to him a series of half-truths and flat lies about Sigismund and why he wanted to meet with Cossa. She told him that the king was obsessed with ending the schism and that he had volunteered that, should such a council demand the resignation of all three popes to restore unity, then he would unite the German vote with the Italians to see that Cossa would be immediately re-elected.

  Cossa cross-questioned her on that point, I thought cynically. `I am sure you pressed hard for that,' he said. `Oh, yes.'

  `And on Cosimo's orders, I suppose.'

  `Entirely,' she said. She emphasized with greatest embellishment, that the reason Sigismund wanted to be seen as the papal protector was to enhance his acceptance as Holy Roman Emperor. Cossa bought all of it, and so did I, because it was logically and reasonably what we wanted to believe.

  She worked with him on the draft of a dispatch to Sigismund, then in Munich, proposing an early meeting. `Now, listen carefully,' she told him, 'at the meeting Sigismund is going to try to dictate the selection of the site for this council. Rosa and Maria Louise will handle him on that and you may be sure that, in the end, the king will be found insisting on your choice of site which must be Kostanz, in southern Germany on the Swiss frontier, in the province of our dear friend John of Nassau.'

  `Konstanz? It has to be held in Italy!'

  No, no. I have sent Maria Giovanna ahead of everyone to acquire options to lease the principal residences and other buildings of the city, as well as all the inns and stabling,' and to secure arrangements with the farmers of the region, on either side of the Bodensee, for all the hay, meat, fish, grain, schnapps and beer they will produce over the next five years. Everything will be legal and in writing. The deposits can be paid for, if you choose, with a loan from the Medici bank. A hundred thousand people a year will be pouring into Konstanz, and that can mean a huge return on our money. Also – and, this is important in terms of what we can earn out of the, council – Bernaba and Palo must get to work now organizing the women, the entertainment and the gaming. We have, to control as much of it as possible.'

  `How much do you estimate we can make if we control the site – beginning right now?'

  `Enormous sums. Absolutely enormous. I would estimate in excess of four hundred and fifty thousand gold florins.' She was relieved and rewarded. She had been able to switch his mind away from fears about what could happen to his papacy if such a council were called by a simple, earnest appeal to his greed. Sigismund could now have his council outside Italy. Cosimo could have his Church reform. And she and Cossa could win a huge amount of money. `You must fight with Sigismund, tooth and nail, for the council to be held in Italy, then gradually let him beat you down. That will get concessions from him on other points, yet give him the feeling of great power. He is 'a fool, you know.'

  They turned to the subject of where Cossa should meet Sigismund. `It really can't matter to him,' the marchesa said. `He is, travelling all the time to keep the people from getting wise to him. I have some workers looking at Piacenza, Cremona and Lodi – but right now it looks like Lodi needs the business which the meeting will generate, and I think they'll be happy to pay us five thousand florins for the privilege.'

  `Then Bernaba should get busy there,' the Holy Father said. `But keep this in mind, please. It is quite possible that such a council will ask me to resign with Benedict and Gregory. Once they get me out no matter what you think – they may not be particularly eager to put me back in again. Also, there will be all that talk about reform. I am relying on you and on Cosimo and his father. We have prospered together, so I know that it is just as much to their advantage as it is to mine to make sure that there are no slips in the plan. With a unified Church there is double the money to be made, from this papacy so burn it into your mind. Before I agree to, anything with this Sigismund, I want the assurances from the Medici that, when the Council of Konstanz is over, I will be the only pope in Christendom.'

  `You have my sacred word on that Cossa,' the marchesa said. It was truly sad, she thought, that he was such a provincial politician. She had really been able to teach him so little. Yet, she was fond of him. He was a merry fellow- and a great lover. He was cunning and brave and many times the man that his enemies were. It was too bad but Cossa was finished.

  When I returned to Bologna from Chur, I was shocked at how old Cossa looked. I had not been separated from him for any length of time before this, so I had not really been able to notice what was happening, to him. His gout was very bad. His hair was white. I remembered it as being grey, not like this. He was consuming himself with his hatred for Catherine's son and with his constant vision of elusive vengeance upon the marchesa. His fear that Ladislas would drive him out of Bologna rested upon him like a succubus, and undoubtedly was what had him agreeing with such alacrity to the meeting with Sigismund. He was too quickly old and haunted, spent' from. wandering across Italy: a pilgrim without a pilgrim's faith.

  Part Four

  43

  On 26 November 1413, Pope John XXIII and Sigismund, uncrowned King of the Romans, made their separate ways to Lodi, a small trading town at the centre of a rough triangle formed by Piacenza, Milan' and Cremona. They remained at Lodi with their enormous households for almost five weeks, attracting many travellers, fortune-tellers and whores. Sigismund signified their meeting by expressing his deathless gratitude to the Holy Father for his potent intercession with the electors. The pope thanked Sigismund for his gallant offer to defend the papacy against Ladislas.

  Sigismund was as groomed as a battle charger. His parted beard, his thicket of a moustache and his brown hair glistened with rare oils as they concealed his sunburned face and diverted attention from his shifty, bloodshot eyes:

  They moved around each other like wrestlers seeking an opening. Cossa said to me when the doors were closed in our apartments after the first meeting, `Sigismund is an optical illusion in his way. Those who see him from afar must be moved to admiration by that splendid royal head, that graceful figure – a true king in all his imperishable youth and beauty. The hearts of any distant crowd must fly in exultation when he smiles and waves to: them. But, when one gets up close, the bright eyes are sunken in caves of many fine lines telling of gross storms of the blood and things which, in the eyes of the pious, could not find pleasure with God. Stand back and admire. Go close and shudder at the wantonness of a wild life.'

  Banquets, balls and parties were organized by the marchesa and her daughters to exhaust the king, but the reason the meeting was protracted was because of Cossa's stubborn insistence that the proposed council be held in Italy. The Holy Father's position was that it would be impossible to bring the great body of the Italian Church across the Alps. The king's reply was that he not only had to consider his own archbishops, who were also electors, but the importance of having present the great princes and lords from many countries who had not been able to reach Pisa because of its location.

  As the talking went on and on, Cossa allowed his agreement to he moved gradually northwards in Italy, as far as Como. Sigismund's compromises moved his choices southwards in Germany, towards

  the centre of thee land mass. Frequently, the deadlock was so firm 'that it was necessary to set the discussions aside while they spoke of resolving the schism, both sides showing extreme piety. Sigismund discussed the invidious disloyalty of John Hus.

  `You know, Holiness,' he said, `Hus comes by his rebelliousness naturally. He was born at Husinez, near Prachtice, close, to the Bavarian frontier, where the racial strife was at its worst. His parents were peasants. By 1401, he was preaching at the church of St Michael and was made Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and, in 1402, he became Rector of the University, then they made him the General Vicar of Prague.'

  No matter what Sigismund said, it was the way
he said it which had the power to put Cossa to sleep: Cossa told me he had never met a man as boring as Sigismund. He did not listen to, and most certainly took no heed of, anything Sigismund had to say about Hus – which was a pity, as it turned out, because Cossa and Hus, in their own strange ways, had a great deal in common about their views on a pure Christian religion. Hus called the priests of Bohemia heretics because they took fees for confession, communion, baptism in his sermons, Hus said they had `lacerated the minds of the pious, extinguished charity and rendered the clergy odious to the people`. Hus also defended the teachings of Wyclif, a reformer who was anathema to all rulers. Hus was not only a reformer, but a patriot, and kings have reason to be suspicious of patriots.

  Gradually, the talk at Lodi would get back to business. Sigismund was certain that the council would demand the resignations of all three popes but that, of course, the college would immediately reelect Cossa. His Holiness 'smiled wistfully, saying that must be so, but until that happened only he was pope, inasmuch as the other two men had been deposed, and that he would preside at all council sessions so that Christendom could be assured of the reform of the Church. Cossa considered that this one fact was his lock upon the council.

  The. king inquired of his staff if there were no city near the German frontier which belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. Count Ulrich of Teck recommended Kempten in southern Swabia. Count Eberhard of Kellenberg agreed that Kempten would be good. I sat at the pope's right hand and rumbled out my authority in the special voice I had developed for my cardinalate. `As Cardinal of Fribourg, I know this region,' I said in tones which brooked no opposition. `I can tell you that Kempten is woefully lacking g in facilities for the delegations, troops and for the immense number of travellers which this council will attract.' I turned slightly to face the Holy Father. `I would recommend to His Holiness the town of Konstanz, which has the advantage of being situated on the Rhine and on the Bodensee. King Rupert made his army headquarters there and they found ample shelter and food. Also, everything may be bought there and at trifling cost.'

  The king turned his beaming face upon the pontiff; his eyes shining with his good fortune. Konstanz was the very city which Pippo Span had been pressing upon him. Maria Louise had told him all the details about it with tingling iciness: Now the pope's own cardinal had brought Konstanz forward! He had won every point! He would shine through history as the saviour of Christendom!

  `Your Holiness,' he said humbly, `Konstanz, the recommendation of your cardinal, is entirely acceptable to me.'

  `Is there a bishopric in Konstanz?' Cossa asked me mildly.

  `Yes, Holy Father.'

  The pope pored over the large map on the table before him. The king guided his eyes with a tracing finger. `Ah ' Cossa said.

  I see. It is indeed at the centre of Europe. Very well. We agree that the council should be held there.'

  When Sigismund's party had dispersed, when Cossa and I were alone in the large anteroom off the meeting room, Cossa smiled brilliantly and said, 'We made ourselves about three hundred and eighty thousand gold florins today, merely as side-money from the Council of Konstanz. You are a cardinal after my own heart.' Just as Carlo Pendini's gold had pulled Cossa into the papacy, so did the beckoning of all the money to be made in Konstanz pull him into that destiny.

  On 9 December 1413, Pope John XXIII promulgated his bull for the convocation of a General Council of the Holy Church to begin on All Saints Day, 1 November 1414, proclaiming that he would be present. On the evening of 9 December, Sigismund paid over to the Marchesa di Artegiana the fee for her services. Then a contract was signed between them by which he agreed to provide Maria Louise with a town house in Prague and one at Buda, grant her the right to travel with him as his consort when Queen Barbara was not required to appear for occasions of state, made provision for her raiment, jewels, furs, shoes and clothes, with a guarantee of 300 golden florins to be paid to her each month following a. capital payment of 5000 florins should they separate before the end of the-five-year contract. The king's hand trembled with thrift-shock and passion as he signed the document.`I believe she is coming -around to liking me,' he said to the marchesa.

  She patted his arm. `I hope you will make her very happy,' she answered.

  44

  Sigismund was unhurried at Lodi. He was a roving post-barbarian who commanded Hungarian and German killer-rustics, and he enjoyed having the Pope of all Christendom at his disposal for as long as he wished to protract it. He would come back to Hus, which had had no connection with the agenda of the meeting, because it was an area in which he could, seem more knowledgeable about the Church than its pontiff `Did you know;' he would ask, `that the University of Paris has been in correspondence with the Archbishop of Prague about John Hus?'

  Cossa was agonizingly bored with Sigismund. Frequently he wondered, in his desperate idleness, if Sigismund could be mentally arrested. `Hus' he answered without interest. `The Bohemian you excommunicated.' `Oh, yes?'

  `For not attending. the Council of Rome?' `I don't remember him.'

  `As I will inherit the Bohemian throne, I somewhat resented the slur on a future subject. The fact is, the French are certain to make a major thing of Hus at the council.'

  `Why the French?"

  ‘They are drawn to heresy.'

  'The business of any council of the Church is the extermination of heresy,' Cossa replied. He would not, he knew, be able to stand much more of this idiot's country-fair German accent: The fellow spoke Latin by whining it through his nose. How did Maria Louise put up with him? He must be paying her a fortune. The king, on his side, thought that if he closed his eyes he would have to believe that he was listening to a Neapolitan street hoodlum. Such a majestic language as Latin, as educated Germans and Luxembourgers spoke it, was not intended to be coarsened by the accents of an alley pimp, which was how he heard all Italian speech. How could they have elected a pope who spoke as commonly as this one – though, of course, the college of cardinals was made up mainly of coarse Italians. `I think I should tell you about John Hus, Holiness,' Sigismund said. `He is a fellow who cannot accept authority. When he argues for the reform of the Church, he is really only objecting to the qualities of his superiors.'

  'That describes every reformer. You, for instance.'

  `Hus is also overly patriotic for a priest. Bohemia, which has been ruled by my family for a long time, is divided against itself. It is all a swarm of Czech nobility and. peasants against Teuton nobility and peasants… The Teuton peasants, already half-German, are up all night clearing forests and making farms. They work the silver mines. They establish towns. They bring prosperity.'

  Cossa moaned lightly to himself: Why must this man always sound like, a comedian? he thought. `It is getting late; Sigismund,' he said. He caught Maria Louise's eye, clenching his jaws and popping his eyes:, She moved closer to Sigismund, forcing the king to move his relentless gaze away from the pope, which gave Cossa the chance to close his mind to the king's verbal clatter.

  `The entire thing is a hatchwork of, ironies,' Sigismund said. `My father founded the University of Prague on the models of Paris and Bologna and the mockery is that that was where Hus learned to concoct his poisons against the Church and state.' He was forcing Cossa to face what reform would mean. `Yet Hus has much right on his side. The Church is too wealthy. It has too many prelates. It is corrupt. It is licentious. Simony abounds and the clergy are sucked into depravities. Hus demanded reform. You sent Cardinal Colonna to Prague and had him excommunicate Hus for contumacy -which was begging the whole question. What I seek, as you may well imagine, is to clear up such despicable rumours about the country I may soon rule. What we must do, therefore, is to have our council examine Hus for heresy. But to be examined he must get to Konstanz. To him get to Konstanz, I would need to give him a safe conduct. I can't do that, however, unless you relieve him of the ban of excommunication.'

  It was impossible to tell whether Sigismund revered Hus or despised him, whether
he sought Church reform or would stop it. The man was the shiftiest kind of a, fool, Cossa saw.

  `Why not?' he, said.

  `Enough of Hus. We should speak of Benedict and, Gregory.'

  `The – ah -. anti-popes.'

  `Then call them by name – Da Luna and Corrario.'

  `Precisely. I propose to call on Corrario at Rimini. He must attend Kostanz.'

  `All that is necessary is that he resign,'' Cossa said.

  `Oh. Well! All three popes must resign,' Sigismund said piously. `So that we may begin again,' he added brightly.

  As Sigismund's force of arms moved out of Lodi then northwards to cross the Alps, the Holy Father returned to Bologna on the Ides of March, which was the marchesa's birthday. On his arrival he was given the news that Ladislas had announced in Perugia that he would sack Bologna and take Cossa prisoner. The anxiety in Bologna was so great that the cardinals and the curia sent their gold and jewels to Venice for safe-keeping: Cossa raged at the marchesa even as he sank into the torpor of Neapolitan fatalism. `You are wasting my life with your schemes,' he snarled at her. `All these elaborate plans to draw in the protection of the mighty Sigismund! Then, when you have almost destroyed me by such a prolonged exposure to the insufferable boob, two days after he disappears with his army over the Alps, Ladislas gets ready to attack me. What was the use of Sigismund but to bring about a council which will not only lead to general reform. of a perfectly sound institution, but will undoubtedly clamour for my resignation as well? Whose side are you on? Ladislas will probably have crucified me in St Peter's Piazza before word can even reach Sigismund that our common enemy is advancing on Bologna.'

  'There is nothing wrong with your alliance with Sigismund,' the marchesa told him. `The fault here is with Ladislas. He is insane. He cannot be allowed to continue his constant wars, The pox has affected his brain.'