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.