A Trembling Upon Rome

by Richard Condon

  Cosimo owed Cossa a great debt. Cossa had made the Medici bank the wealthiest and most powerful in the world. He had made the Medici lords of the world by working unceasingly to transfer the banking of all levels of the Church to Cosimo and his father. `Protect Cossa' Cosimo's father had told him, had written to him. 'Once he is brought down from the papacy, we must do everything to see that he is safe and entirely comfortable.'

  Cossa watched unsurprised as Cosimo entered the place. There was only one stool, occupied by Cossa. Cosimo sat on the bed.

  `I understood what you meant by what happened to Decima and her daughters,' he said grimly. -

  Cossa nodded.

  ‘I sent Maria Giovanna away.'

  `She can be found, I suppose.'

  'That won't be necessary, Baldassare. You have grievances and I came here so set them right.'

  `Good.'

  'This place is impossible. I have spoken to Palatine. He will make you comfortable with your staff and your cook no matter where they take you from here. You can have – uh – visitors.' 'We mustn't let anyone harm Franco Ellera.'

  'My dear fellow – he is a cardinal. He is inviolate.'

  `The, council will sentence you.' Cosimo sighed. `If you had only resigned, what a life you, could have had! But that would have been too uncomplicated for you, I know, so I will, see to it that the sentencing will be as light as possible under the circumstances. They will forget those heresy charges and that false charge, about the murder of Pope Alexander.'

  'You and Decima killed Alexander.' They stared at each other.

  'It will be necessary, for you to stay in confinement until the new pope is elected, but I will see that it is extremely pleasant. You will I have your friends and your books. You will be better off than merely comfortable.'

  'How long will they imprison me so?'

  'I should say, firstly, until the election of the new pope. Secondly, I should think he would want to get himself safely back to Italy before pardoning you.'

  'How long should that take?’

  'There is no way of measuring it. They will all want to discuss reform before they get around to electing a, pope.'

  'Reform!' he snorted. `What about money for me. Cosimo?' 'Well! You'll have the money from all the various businesses, you and Decima set up in Konstanz… You have your accumulated account at the bank which includes the gift from Carlo Pendini.'

  'Bernaba has to have her share of the Konstanz enterprises.' 'Why not? But you will have your share and Decima's share.' 'I think I deserve to have your share as well.'

  'You shall have it. Then, when the new pope is elected, he will want to give you a respectable pension, won he?'

  'Will' he?'

  'Be sure of it. I guarantee that. Besides popes take care of popes for reasons of precedent, don't they?'

  'They do when the Medici bank tells them they must. But he must also give me a dignity. I can't be expected to return to Bologna as plain Signor Cossa.'

  'I will handle everything. You will never be less than a prince of the Church.'

  `You are a good friend when you are a good friend, Cosimo.'

  `Then you won't look for Maria Giovanna?'

  'No. They were all such lovely women. Decima was the loveliest.'

  `What happened to her?'

  'I can't tell you that,' Cossa said sadly. `But there is one more thing. All this running I have been doing has only reminded me how old I am. Whatever the council tells the world about me, there is the danger that that is how I shall be remembered after I am dead. W e wouldn't want that, would we? But I reason that you and your father were very much a part of what my life became.'

  Cosimo nodded, silent.

  `So I want the respectability of a fine tomb, a tomb of such majesty that it will cast doubt into the minds of Christians unborn, a tomb which will defy time by making them see me in the light of its glory.',

  'I will do that for you.'

  `Yes, and I thank you. It will be my revenge on the miserable men who, will judge me, the Princes of Nothing, who, when they die, will be forgotten almost before their bodies grow cold. 'I will pay for the tomb and you will see that a great man designs it. Take whatever it will cost out of Carlo Pendini's gold.' He smiled a most beautiful smile, a sweet, endearing, warm' smile which shared his own joy with his friend.

  `So be it, Your Holiness,' Cosimo answered him.

  Within two hours after Cosimo had left him, Cossa was moved to luxurious quarters in the main part of the castle. As his 'confessor', I had been permitted by the warders, after the intervention of Cosimo, to live with Cossa in these apartments. We played cards. We remembered old campaigns. We quarrelled genially. Early on while we were there, we got talking about Hus. Cossa called for the captain of the guard and gave him 200 florins with a wink which said there was more where; that came from.

  `They tell me you have John Hus here.'

  'Yes, Your Holiness. He is safely locked in a cell.'

  'Bring him to me, please.' -

  `Holiness! Hus is a condemned heretic. He will be burned to death tomorrow.'

  'All the more reason, my son. The man is doomed and I am his pope. Bring him to me.’

  When Hus came into Cossa's apartment from his windowless dungeon, he was deathly pale but he looked younger and more serene than when he had arrived in Konstanz. Cossa was older and thicker and more companionable with eternal death. There was a lightness about Hus, a health which seemed capable of taking him beyond death. When he saw Cossa he bowed deeply, without smiling. `Holiness,' he said, `what a great day for me.'

  Cossa hobbled on his gout to a chair and pushed it towards Hus. `Sit, my son,' he said. `You have a great journey ahead of you.' They sat facing each other in front of a broad window which looked across the limpid river towards the fields where Hus would be burned at the stake the. next day.

  `Where did it go wrong for you?' Cossa asked him. 'I don't remember anymore.' `The same council condemned me, you know.' `So the warders told me.'

  `The king spoke of you last summer at Lodi. I cancelled your excommunication at Lodi.'

  `Did you?'

  `A woman who used to advise me – a great woman – sent me a letter concerning you which her daughter had sent her from Prague. It puzzled me.'

  `How, Your Holiness?'

  `Why did you get into political things, Hus? You had a great pulpit. All Bohemia was your congregation. You were the queen's confessor. Everyone praised you. Why did you come to Konstanz among all those ambitious men?'

  'The Church needed reform. I wanted to debate what was wrong with the men who disagreed with me and convince them to change their ways. There are evil men in the Church, Holiness.'

  `No man is evil to himself,' Cossa said, solemnly wanting Hus, to carry this knowledge to his grave. `There are only pragmatic men who seek to make things work. As Jesus told us – they know not what they do, they only know they must get it done as best they can. Things – certainly enormous concepts such as Christendom – must seem to work.'

  'Is that what you did, Holiness?'

  `I was never in all that with them and with you, Hus. I had a different trade. Fate – you would say God, of course – turned me away from where I served well to this for which I cared nothing. You

  came to Konstanz. I accepted the papacy. We don't belong here, so the men who do have cast us out.'

  'I know there is more than that,' Hus said stolidly. `God awaits me tomorrow with the explanation.'

  `Do you want to confess to me?'

  `I have confessed with my life, Holiness.'

  `I can vaguely understand that. Perhaps all my life I have met the wrong men. That is the hard sentence imposed upon lawyers.'

  Pope John XXIII was deposed on 29 May. He did not appear at the council. Sigismund was surrounded by, the princes of the empire, fifteen cardinals and a shining array of prelates and learned doctors. The decree of deposition was read by the Bishop of Arras, assisted by the deputies of four nations, then t
he Archbishop of Riga produced the pope's seal, which was solemnly destroyed under the eyes of the council by a goldsmith.

  Historical Note

  The Council of Konstanz, which ended in 1418 after three years and six months of existence, also ended the great schism in the Church which had lasted for thirty-nine years, and terminated the 112 year period when popes ruled from France.

  Cardinal Deacon Oddone Colonna was elected as the single Pope of Christendom on 11 November 1417, at Konstanz, taking the name of Martin V.

  Baldassare Cossa was held prisoner at the castle of Heidelberg from 1415 until 1418, when Cosimo di Medici took up the matter of his release with Pope Martin. For payment of 38,500 Rhenish gulden made by Bartholomeus de Bardis, the Medici bank representative – presumably advanced against Cossas promissory note – the former pope was released by his jailer, Count Palatine.

  While Pope Martin was officiating in the cathedral at Florence on 18 June 1419, Baldassare. Cossa appeared before him. Cossa threw himself at Martin's feet, acknowledging him as the only true and canonically elected pope.

  On 23 June 1419, Pope Martin bestowed on Cossa the bishopric of Frascati, and on the following Tuesday raised him once more to the sacred college as Cardinal Tusculanus, with all of the benefices, incomes and emoluments due to a prince of the Church.

  Cossa lived out his remaining days with his faithful friend and banker Cosimo di Medici, in the Medici house in the Via dei Buoni. He died on 22 December 1419. He was fifty-two years old. Cosimo di Medici commissioned a tomb for Cossa, which was designed, by Donatello and fashioned by Michelozzo. It rests to this day in Florence, on the right-hand side of the high altar of the baptistery, the most ancient church in the city, which replaced the Temple of Mars. The bronze figure of Cossa, recumbent on one side, looks out over the Florentine children who are brought there to be baptized.

  Franco Ellera lived on in Florence, Bologna and, Rome after Cossa's death. He died in Florence, in Cosimo di Medici's garden, in 1424, surviving his wife, Bernaba, by four years.

  Cosimo di Medici died some years later in Florence, the host to the Italian Renaissance. At the urging of his mistress, Maria Giovanna Toreton, he sent two consecutive expeditions to North Africa, Turkey and the Middle East to search for the Marchesa di Artegiana – to no avail. Maria Giovanna Toreton was the last survivor of the group which had secured the Church's banking for the Medici. She died in 1464, at the age of eighty.

  No reform of the Church had been attempted by the Council of Konstanz.

  ***

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