A Trembling Upon Rome

by Richard Condon

  In the course of that evening, the night and the next morning, the papal household and many prelates also rode out after the pope, until the absence of so many people was reported to Sigismund.

  After he had waited for one hour with the sisters,' Cossa said to them, `Something has gone wrong. They are not coming.'

  'How can that be?' Rosa said. `They must come.'

  After' another hour Cossa said to them, `Every moment we wait here puts her life more in danger. Only you can help her now. You must go to Sigismund so that his troops may begin a search for her.' At last the two women were persuaded. They rode off rapidly to the Petershausen monastery. The Duke of Austria arrived at Ermatingen over an hour after that. Collecting the Holy Father and his goldbearing packhorses they rode on to Steckhorn, five miles further down the river where the sailing boat had been moored. It had two rudders and, passing under the old wooden bridge at Stein, it carried them down the river to Schaffhausen. It was long past midnight when they arrived.

  Schaffhausen was held by the Duke of Austria on mortgage from the empire. Behind the town, standing on a small hill, was a castle with a thick ring of walls set with tall bastion, towers. Here the Holy Father took shelter.

  After dawn the next morning, Cossa wrote to Sigismund. `Thanks be to the all-powerful God, my dearest son,' the letter said, `for we are now here at Schaffhausen in a free and good climate. We were able to make our way out of Konstanz because the daughters of the Marchesa di Artegiana; Maria Louise' Sterz and Rosa Belmonte, love us so well and, sought our freedom so bravely and with your kind safe conduct. We will stay here well protected, with no intention of receding from our intention of resigning, doing so in full freedom and good health.'

  58

  At the same time as Cossa was writing to Sigismund, that morning, the king began to get wind that the-pope had fled Konstanz because reports kept coming in that so many members of the papal household had disappeared. He refused to see Maria Louise and Rosa when they sought audience because he wanted to work undisturbed all day, sending a force to the papal palace in Konstanz to break in and search out Cossa if he was there. When, in the midafternoon, a cold stormy and oppressive afternoon, Cossa's letter arrived from Schaffhausen, he went wild with rage that the marchesa's daughters had made Cossa's escape possible. `Those women will do anything for money!' he shouted and sent Hungarian officers to arrest and question Maria Louise and Rosa. Pippo Span was with him, trying to calm him, when a Hungarian captain returned with the confirmation that the two women had escorted the pope out of the city.

  `Kill them!' Sigismund shouted at the captain.

  Pippo Span drew his sword ominously. His eyes glittered. `Take back the order,' he said.

  `So!' Sigismund said. `Your woman betrays me and you draw your sword on me. How much did you have to do with that bastard's escape?'

  The Hungarian captain did not know what to do with this change of affairs between his king and his general. He could not decide whether to summon the guard or to fight Pippo Span The king burned him with a terrible glance. `Guard!' he shouted. Soldiers came rushing into the room and three irrevocable things had happened: Pippo Span had drawn on his king, there was a witness, and the guard had been called in to compound the witnessing.

  Pippo Span ran the captain through. The guards rushed at him with their weapons. He held them off while he shouted at Sigismund, `How many times have I given you back your life, my dear friend, that you should repay me by killing my woman? How many armies have I saved you and how many victories have I put at your feet that you should deny the loyalty of Rosa?' The soldiers backed him across the room. All at once. Sigismund realized what was happening: that his own people were about to kill his most dear and loyal friend.

  `Stop! Guard!' Pippo Span was dead before the last word left his mouth.

  Two more officers came running into the room. Sigismund stared at them through his blank loss. `There are two women in the cells who have been questioned,' he said. `Execute them.'

  Cosimo di Medici conferred with the Cardinal of Ostia about the arrangements for the triple funeral which was held swiftly the following day. I had returned to Konstanz on Cossa's orders because he wanted a daily report on how the council was reacting to his escape. I attended the triple funeral.

  On the walls in the cathedral were set 134 burning candles, each weighing six and a half pounds. In front of the high altar Cosimo had had a small open house built eight feet wide, ten feet long, and eighteen feet high. On its roof 400 small candles burned, each a quarter of a pound of wax. The three biers lay under the roof, each covered with golden cloths. Around the small house sat the forty-five servants of the marchesa, Maria Louise and Rosa, each one wearing a black cloak. Between each of these stood a soldier of Pippo Span's command, holding a burning candle.

  The Cardinal of Ostia sang the requiem assisted by two cardinals. One sang the gospel. I sang the epistle. We were dressed as priests but were without vestments. After fourteen days, the coffins would be taken out of their crypts to be transported for burial at the Villa di Artegiana, in Perugia.

  After the funeral, the two surviving sisters, myself, Bernaba and Cosimo di Medici went to the House of the Goldenen Backen, where Cosimo lived.

  It is necessary for us to discuss several things,' Cosimo said to them in the house. `Everything happened so fast, but it still remains that Rosa and Maria Louise died within a day of the marchesa's disappearance and the pope's escape.'

  `Are these things connected?' Helene asked.

  `They must be,' Cosimo said. `Your mother dined with the-pope, then not only did she vanish but her bodyguard of eight men disappeared. Why did you go to look for the marchesa, Bernaba?'

  `We were going to the tournament together with Helene and Maria Giovanna – but the marchesa asked me to call on her early because there was a dress which needed fixing and I have the knack for that.'

  `But you know her. You know that she had for years, spent much time with the pope. Why such alarm on this particular morning?'

  'I knew she wouldn't miss the tournament for anything. I thought of course that she was still with the pope but I knew she wanted that dress mended. As I left her house, I passed the stables. There were so few horses there so many empty stalls – that I asked the groom if the bodyguard had gone to fetch the marchesa. He told me they had never returned the night before.'

  `Then you went to Petershausen?'

  'No, my lord. I went to the papal palace and spoke with my kinswoman who is the maid for the ladies' apartments there.' She told me the marchesa was not there and had not spent the night there. Then I went to Petershausen.'

  'How do you explain that Maria Louise and Rosa helped the pope to escape?'

  'I thought about that for a long time. The marchesa must have got a message to them, telling them to help the pope.'

  `Please don't press Bernaba, Cosimo,' Maria Giovanna said. 'She is our friend and my mother's friend. She had nothing to do with this. Sigismund had everyone killed.' Her voice broke. `What are you going to do about Sigismund?'

  'He is presently beyond my reach,' Cosimo said with emotion. `But not for ever. He will be repaid:''

  59

  From the moment the pope's messenger had whispered into the Duke of Austria's ear at the jousting field that the pope had escaped and that he was to join him, the fat young man had begun to feel the freeze of fear. When his own uncle, the famous warrior Hans von Lupfen, had flatly refused to join: him in the adventure, he knew that he had great reason to feel terror. When he had seen the expression on the face and in the eyes of such a man as Hans von Diessenhofen, and felt the terrible danger in his voice when he said, so bleakly, 'Do you have any idea what you have done?' he had tasted his own doom. But it had become a thing of necessity. What had seemed like a noble action when he had taken the pope's money and agreed to protect him had exposed him to the possibility of his own ruination,

  even of his own death but he could not refuse because the pope had ren
ted his honour as well.

  He rode out to the meeting place at Ermatingen sick in his heart, in his stomach and in his mind. He was barely able to speak to the pope when he found him in: the priest's house, beside the Rhine, ' eating quantities of cheese with me and speaking as merrily as if they were all embarked on a rare excursion. They were not alone until the door was closed upon the pope's chambers in the castle at Schaffhausen and the pope, still merry, began to talk to him as if he did not know that he was standing beyond and speaking through a wall of paralysing dread which separated them.

  `Your departed, brother Leopold was once married to Katherine of Burgundy and she likes you,' was what the pontiff said to him, smiling so, sweetly, so charmingly, that the duke was confused as to why he had become so alarmed.

  'I don't understand,' the duke said with irritation. `Why. do you say that?'

  `Why? She certainly dealt with you: warmly from your brother's estate. She likes you. You can prepare our welcome in Burgundy.'

  `Burgundy? Your welcome?'

  'I am going to Burgundy. I shall rule the Church from France.'

  'But what do you want from me?'

  'Frederick,' the pope explained gently, 'you are my defender, are you not? You will get me to Burgundy safely at the head of your troops.'

  `Are you crazy? Sigismund and the nations would take my head’

  `Not a bit of it, lad., The Council of Konstanz is finished. It has no

  legal head and no legal existence. Sigismund will have many other things to do.'

  'I have hardly seen you since the night at Meran five months ago!

  We have only exchanged two messages, in the six weeks I've been in Konstanz! You cannot involve men in this terrible thing"

  'Have you forgotten? You took my money in exchange for your own vows to defend me.'

  'Damn your money!'

  `Frederick!' Cossa admonished gently,

  `The only reason I agreed to that arrangement was because I was Sigismund's enemy.'

  'And you needed my help to cope with the enmity of the Bishops of Brixen, Chur and Trient.'

  'I thought you wanted moral support.'

  'Frederick, you say that you accepted our condition because Sigismund was your enemy. Well? He is more than ever your enemy now. The three bishops have been handled. You have my money You, have one more lofty title and an extraordinary post – Defender of the Papacy – which your descendants will dine off for the next three hundred years. All we ask in return is that you and your troops escort me safely to Burgundian soil. There is no reason to panic,’

  `Your Holiness – once you are on Burgundian soil I shall have no position from which to bargain with Sigismund. He will outlaw me for this! He will have everything I own!'

  Cossa dropped the silken amiability. His face hardened murderously, making Frederick doubly fearful. `If you even imagine you have a bargaining position, that you can use me as a trading piece with Sigismund, I will have you garrotted here, in this room, now – do you understand me?' he said. `We will stop this nonsense about the value of your word. It is worthless. You will take me to Burgundy.'

  'Holiness – listen to me. It was a mistake for you to escape from Konstanz. You may have had to resign your papacy – yes. I mean, that is the sheer reality of it, isn't it? But the French cardinals and the other moderates in the council who hold the balance between the fanatic English and the Germans on one hand, and the Italians on the other, would make sure that you could resign with all dignity and all due grace. D'Ailly understands these things. He would make sure that your future would be richly endowed. But Sigismund! Sigismund is a barbarian and I shudder to think what it is – right now – that he is getting underway against you.'

  `You are not competent to advise me,' Cossa said. `I hired you to defend me. Are you going to get me to Burgundy?'

  'No, Your Holiness. I can get no one out. How can I get myself out?'

  The following afternoon, the thundering news of the pope's flight brought consternation to Konstanz. As if with a single mind, 100,000 people decided that the council was finished. The pope's palace was immediately sacked. Italians and Austrians left the town at night, on foot, on horses, in boats and in terror for their lives. Sigismund's guards occupied every street and square.

  At dawn, Sigismund and the Duke Ludwig of Bavaria-Heidelberg, preceded by trumpeters, rode through the town proclaiming that all was well, that no one was to leave or think of leaving, that all persons and possessions were safe, guaranteed by the king's protection. The shops and banks were opened again as before.

  Sigismund assembled every conciliar delegate and assured them that, at the peril of their lives, they would maintain the council Slowly his resolution convinced everyone that they were safe. The town quieted; but Sigismund was in a shaking, tilting, unbalancing fury. He saw his ultimate throne slipping away from him He assembled the princes of the empire at Petershausen and impeached Frederick before them, while the cardinals met and elected a deputation to be sent to Pope John to affirm that nothing should be undertaken to his detriment in the meanwhile.

  The pope, from Schaffhausen, ordered the curia and the cardinals to join him under the pain of excommunication – within six days. Some of the curia left Konstanz. On Palm Sunday, four of the Italian cardinals, led by Oddo Colonna, fled to Schaffhausen. On the following day, three more arrived, including myself, bringing with me 98,000 gold florins which was Cossa's (and the marchesa's) share of what had been earned by the women, gambling and the other enterprises in the past few months which Bernaba had been overseeing for the marchesa.

  Outraged by the mass desertions, Sigismund personally nailed a manifesto to the door of the papal, palace in Konstanz, against the pope and. the cardinals, charging John with tyranny, homicide, simony, fornication and jobbery.

  Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Rheims, was the pope's first ambassador to the council. He brought a letter from the pope to the cardinals which appointed the body of the sacred college as his proctors to effect his resignation in case both of his rivals died or abdicated. The letter also stated Cossa’s wish to make the journey to Nice with Sigismund in order that simultaneous resignations might be effected there, knowing that if he arrived in Nice Benedict would refuse to resign. Two days later, a committee of three cardinals returned from Schaffhausen and reported to a congregation of the council. They advised the council that it was virtually dissolved through the absence of the pope, who possessed and retained the right to dismiss it when he chose. However, they reported, the pope would promise not to dissolve the council, and he himself would remain in the neighbourhood of Konstanz, if the sacred college and the curia went to him.

  Sigismund then addressed the council and told it how it would vote. `My soldiers surround this place,' he told them. `If you vote to leave Konstanz, you will be dragged out to a prison.'

  It was circulated everywhere throughout the city that the pope's proposals had been scornfully rejected by the council and by the cardinals – so that everyone was able to believe that Sigismund did not at all want to alienate the cardinals because that-.would have effectively broken up the council,

  At the fourth general session of the council, held on Saturday, 30 March 1415, the following: resolutions were passed:

  (I) The Synod of Konstanz, legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit, constituting an ecumenical council and representing the Church Militant, derives its power directly from Christ, to whom everyone, of whatever state or dignity, even the pope, is bound to render obedience in all that relates to the faith or to the extirpation of the schism.

  (II) The pope shall not summon from Konstanz – without consent of the synod – the curia or its officers, whose absence would entail a dissolution of the council.

  (III) All penalties pronounced by the pope since leaving Konstanz against any dependants or members of the council are invalid.

  Sigismund resolved to strangle the mockery of his religion, his ambition and his dignity caused by Cossa's flight
with a vengeful and relentless show of statesmanship, and logic. But he hoped to do so mainly by a force of arms which would drag Cossa back to Konstanz by his heels through the mud. The Italian libertine, as Sigismund saw the pope, had almost succeeded in manoeuvring him into looking like some foolish outlander who had no more authority than a scullery maid. Even the thought of Cossa's returning to Konstanz bearing all the, dignity of a reigning pope filled him with dismayed rage and a blind-sense of prevention at any cost. He could see, as the council most obviously could not see, that Cossa's design was to draw out the negotiations, to vacillate and procrastinate until he could scatter the council and leave Sigismund standing there – like some bewildered bumpkin. Therefore, in protection of his amour-propre, that haughty, sky-high edifice from which most history has been hung, the king stationed, guards on the city, walls and posted armed men along all roads.

  There were still desertions by the papal party from Konstanz to the pope at Schaffhausen only thirty miles away. The entire population of Konstanz was told that, as soon as they got there, they were under the protection of the Duke of Austria – so Sigismund, driven almost mad by frustration, told his armies to deal with the fat young duke. I withdrew to Schaffhausen once again, leaving Bernaba behind to observe.

  Sigismund summoned Frederick to appear and answer. The three days of grace had expired and the duke had made no sign. His treachery to the empire and to the council was so heinous, as Sigismund daily reminded everyone, that not a voice was raised in Frederick's defence at any of the assemblies of the Teuton leaders. Sigismund pronounced the ban of empire on him. All the duke's lands and subjects were released from their obedience to him and reverted to the empire. It was forbidden to give him lodging or shelter, to provide him with food, forage, help or counsel, to keep the peace or to abide with him. The whole of empire, lords and cities, clergy and laymen, informed of the ban, were told that all alliances and contracts with the duke were null and invalid. The duke was outlawed.