He refused to listen to me.
`You are the pope, Cossa,' the marchesa drilled into him. 'You are the shepherd of the people. As the differences between the classes grow, when there is less social mobility and greater growth of violent unrest in the cities, there is a decline in the moral-values. People are even losing their faith in the Church. Look at the public immorality. Let that continue and the, revenues of the Church will dwindle even more. It is you who keep saying that the Church is a business and I am trying to tell you what is happening to businesses in the fifteenth century. Get it all straight, for heaven's sake. You are going to have to call a real council, as ordered at Pisa. You have to set France against Ladislas: You are going to need Sigismund and the princes. So say mass every day. Confess everyday. Walk through the streets in holy processions. Hold daily audiences with the people, because you are going to need them too:’
Cossa was unable to lure Catherine Visconti's son to Bologna. Whenever there was a pause in the problems he had created for himself, he would write to the young Duke of Milan in cordial, even warm terms, and tell him how he hoped the young man could join him on this holiday or be with him for the commemoration of that feast day, but the young man replied describing the kind of court intrigues which he was fighting, how he would be many more months in weeding out his enemies, but that when his authority was safe and undisputed he would most happily go to Bologna to visit his pope.
35
Cossa went on with what he considered to be the work of the papacy, keeping voluminous records of all financial transactions, no matter how small. He held regular auction sales of benefices to the highest bidders; there was no concession which he would not sell. The plenary indulgence field was extremely profitable, particularly in Germany. In fact, he was even able to squeeze gold out of the Italians.' He appointed the marchesa as the Church's land agent in Rome, where she handled the sale of eight churches, their contents and the land on which they stood to Cosimo di Medici for capital sums. The churches were razed and their contents sold to provide for high-cost housing. His masterstroke of cash leverage was the mortgaging of the income of the Church to the Medici bank, to meet the current running expenses during periods of inadequate cash receipts. The fees for bulls alone in the first year of Cossa's reign as Pope John XXIII amounted to 47,000 florins.
He perpetuated force. War among the, cities of Italy became the first ritual of the Church because, as he saw it, in Italy power was temporal and naked. Even Italian wars became business propositions. The city-states hired weapons and condottieri through generals who were no more than labour contractors. Elsewhere, throughout Europe, society was able to organize stable states on, national scales, but Italy would not consider doing that because of the example of the Church. Pope John XXIII was the tallest giant on the Italian, peninsula, but he was a pygmy beside the rulers beyond the Alps.
The marchesa hammered at him. `Listen to me, Cossa! ' she would shout at him. `The diplomat has to take over from the soldier. Only brains count. Brute force is nothing. Only diplomacy can preserve your papacy.' Giovanni di Bicci di Medici gave her a blunt assignment. To carry it out, which meant changing Cossa, she needed to be more than blunt.
`Sigismund of Hungary supports the papacy of Gregory XlI,' she told him. `Until we get Sigismund on our side, locked on our side, the papacy and Italy are going to be smothered by Europe.'
`What are you talking about, Decima?'
'Look at the papacy! One third of its former glory, one half of its former income. Suppose those two old men, Benedict and Gregory, did die tomorrow, what would you win in the face of these strident demands for Church reform? But if, you became the force which pushes the impecunious Sigismund to the supreme leadership of Germany by making him the Holy Roman Emperor, you will be able to operate as the popes operated two hundred years ago, manipulating the balance of power among the contending kings for the temporal domination of Europe.'
`Oh, yes? And just how do I do that?'
`It will take careful diplomacy. Only the electors can make Sigismund emperor. John of Nassau is the most powerful of the seven electors. He is First Elector and has great influence over the other six. So we must drug John of Nassau with money and churchly honours.'
`I can spare him the honours;' Cossa said, `but who has the money for nonsense like that"
`Nonsense? Nonsense? Will you still think it is nonsense if the Medici advance the money? Cossa -consider Cosimo's water-power scheme, the plan for all the factories: suppose Cosimo decides to invite John of Nassau into the scheme and suppose you send a strong legate to him to hitch together a natural alliance among Nassau, Sigismund, the Church and the Medici bank would you still tell me this isn't the thing we must do?'
Cossa sighed with exasperation. 'You are the agent for the Medici, not me. Why ask me?'
`Who will be your legate?' 'I will think about it.'
`Nassau is the same sort of churchman as you are, which is to say he is a blood-and-guts warrior who lives on noise and never says mass if he can avoid it. So you must send someone who understands you sympathetically. Nassau prefers to speak German. So your legate must be able to do that. If you send a cardinal as legate, Nassau would be outranked. But that suits the way his mind works – He is German. He can only look down on, people or look up at someone. So you must send a cardinal, a bold man who will do what you tell him and who will be unmoved by Nassau's noisy trappings of wealth and power. We will have a lock on Sigismund.'
`And where do I find such a towering model of a cardinal? Don't you think Nassau knows all the German-speaking cardinals?'
'You are the pope. Create one.' `Who? That is all I am asking you. Who, for Christ's sake?'
`Franco Ellera.'
His face underwent visual changes from astonishment to awe to incredulity. 'Apart from the fact that Franco. Ellera is a Jew,' he said, sarcastically, `and a slave, and has, never, to my knowledge, set foot inside a church, he is the very man for the job.'
'Is he really a Jew?' she marvelled. `He was a part of your family.'
`The German women on the ships my father took were Jews. His mother was a Jew. The survivors and he was one – said he was a Jew. Why, Franco Ellera even claims that his father was a Jew.’
The marchesa shrugged. `So he is, a Jew. John of Nassau doesn't know that.'
Cossa struck the arms of his chair with both fists and bounded to his feet enthusiastically. 'By God, Franco Ellera certainly looks like a Cardinal. That oppressive voice! The compulsion to give advice! That constant self-justification and unending self-approval! That white beard! Those haggard, radar-sighted black-bagged eyes! Franco Ellera could have Nassau feeling as if he were some newly recruited foot soldier.'
When the marchesa departed through the curtains and down the private staircase to visit Bernaba and give her the details of the news, Cossa summoned me to him, bidding me to lock the door as I came
`What's up, Cossa?' I asked him. `Locking doors? What kind of a robbery are you plotting this time?'
`No plot. I've just been thinking about what a long voyage you've
made since you were that boy on that raft.'
`I didn't get here alone, your know.'
`I just welled over with feeling.'
'It couldn't hurt.'
`Do you respect the marchesa's judgement?'
`She is almost as smart as your father and twice as dangerous.'
`Would you like me to continue to be pope?'
'If you want it. What is this, a catechism drill, all these trick questions?'