Such are the cares that increasingly occupy the thoughts and prayers of John XXII. The pontiff is now eighty-six — an age prone to mistrust and fear — and lacks the strength to undertake the project needed to safeguard the Church’s assets. That work must fall to his chosen successor, Jacques — Cardinal Fournier — who stands before him in the plain monk’s robe he still insists on wearing. The robe suggests pious simplicity, but the pope happens to know — His Holiness has spies in every cardinal’s palace — that Jacques owns no fewer than twenty such robes, so he will never lack for a spotless one.
“Jacques, you must begin planning,” the pope tells him. “I will be gone very soon, and you must act swiftly once you succeed me.”
Fournier clasps his plump fingers and bows deeply. “You do me great honor, Holiness, but no one knows the will of God. You might yet reign for many years.” Just to spite me, he thinks, but does not say aloud. “And when the sad time of your passing does come, the College of Cardinals might feel led to elect someone else as your successor.”
“Don’t waste my time with false piety and hollow protestations,” the old man snaps. “I am old. I was old when they elected me. Seventy-two. That’s why they elected me — they thought I would return the favor by dying quickly. For fourteen years I have disappointed them by continuing to live, despite three attempts to poison me. They killed my dear nephew Jacopo, but they could not kill me. And in these recent years, I have prepared the way for you, Jacques. I have created two dozen cardinals, most from southern France, three from my own family. The Italian cardinals are now few and weak; we French are many and strong; and you, Jacques, have distinguished yourself by defending the faith. You shall wear the crown and carry the keys.”
Fournier bows again, but this time less deeply, and with an eager glint in his eye. “Thy will be done, O Lord,” he murmurs in a mellifluous voice — perhaps to God, perhaps to his powerful patron.
“But there is one thing that could yet stand between you and your hopes,” the old man pipes in his thin, reedy voice. “And you know what it is.” Christ, thinks Fournier, will he never cease to cudgel me with this? “It is Eckhart.”
“Eckhart has been swept into the gutter, Holy Father. He is dead, and you have condemned his heretical teachings. Eckhart’s followers have scattered like dust. No one cares that he is dead. In a hundred years, no one will know that he ever lived.”
“I pray that you are right, Jacques. But you must take care, lest the Dominican friars make him out to be a martyr.”
“It cannot happen, Holiness. I alone witnessed his death.”
“But what of his remains? Your Cistercian brethren revere the head of Thomas Aquinas. What if the Dominicans find Eckhart and proclaim his head or his heart to be relics?”
“He will never be found. His bones are in a sealed ossuary in the treasury, and only you, I, and the chamberlain have keys to that room.”
“Bah!” The old man waves a trembling hand at their surroundings. “The treasury could be plundered by a dozen Carmelite nuns. You must build a proper palace, Jacques. One that is worthy of the heir of Saint Peter. One that is strong enough to protect God’s gold. God has given us sway over emperors and kings, yet we huddle here in a building built to house a bishop.”
“I have given this much thought since we first discussed it,” Fournier says. “I’ve taken the liberty of having an architect draw preliminary designs. And such designs they are!” Animated now, pacing and gesturing, he paints a word picture of the mighty towers and lofty battlements that will surround a central cloister — an exterior of formidable strength, an interior of tranquil beauty. “When I am pope — if I am pope — the work will begin immediately. Eckhart’s death, and Eckhart’s remains, will be sealed deep within the walls. And there they will stay until the glorious morning when the last trumpet sounds, and our Lord and Savior returns in all His glory to reward the faithful…and to unleash His righteous anger upon heathens, heretics, and all other enemies of the one true faith.”
He ends his impassioned soliloquy with his hands and eyes raised toward Heaven. He holds the pose a moment, then turns and looks to the pope for approval.
The old man is slumped in his chair, sleeping, slack jawed and drooling on his sumptuous silk vestments.
CHAPTER 29
Simone gasps when the boat rounds a bend in the Rhône and the city comes into view. Seven years earlier, he had thought that Avignon could not possibly grow bigger or more glorious, but the mighty stone towers rising from the dome of rock prove him spectacularly wrong. The cathedral, which once held pride of place atop the rock, is now dwarfed by a mighty tower, which looms so close to the nave that the two structures all but touch. Wooden scaffolds surround three other towers in various stages of construction. “Bellissimo,” Martini breathes, partly because the city truly is beautiful, but also because he feels such secret relief: His painful decision was surely the right one after all.
On his previous trip to Avignon, in the fall of 1328, Martini had come to scout the city, to see what prospects and commissions it might offer one of Italy’s most talented and respected painters. Avignon was indeed thriving then, but as he made the rounds of potential patrons — mostly the flock of wealthy cardinals who were descending on the city, trailing clouds of architects and decorators behind them — he was frustrated to find that most of the cardinals, and therefore most of the commissions, were French. For an Italian artist to move to Avignon on the strength of mere talent and brio would have been a foolish gamble in 1329. But now, in the fall of 1335, Martini’s been begged to come by a newly hatted Italian cardinal, and he knows now that his family won’t starve.
He has already landed a most unusual commission: a secular painting, a small picture of a young married woman, commissioned not by her husband, but by a poet who’s madly in love with her. A simple assignment, really — the face of a lady, nothing else in the picture — and yet Simone has never done such a painting before, nor, for that matter, has any painter he knows of. Oh, it’s common, and even crucial, to shoehorn the faces of rich patrons into chapel frescoes — to give one of the Three Wise Men, for instance, the craggy good looks of Count Corsino, if Corsino’s the one who’s piously paying for the fresco. But a picture of a woman — a woman as her real, true self, not masquerading as some saint or martyr, some spectator at a miracle? It’s unheard-of! Simone’s not sure how much demand there might be for such paintings, but who knows? If he does an inspired rendering of this heartbreaking beauty, portraits might actually catch on.
The lady’s heartbroken mad poet, needless to say, is Italian.
On his prior trip Martini had traveled light. Now he’s ponderously laden, freighted with so many tools of his trade that even he — who packed everything himself — finds the sheer quantity incomprehensible: boxes and jars of pigments, oils, solvents; cases of brushes and chalks and charcoals and easels and palettes; rolls of canvas and huge folios of paper; parchment envelopes containing gold leaf beaten thin as a day’s layer of dust; a carpenter’s shop worth of woodworking tools, needed to saw boards and build frames. The working gear is only the half of it, because he’s traveling with his beloved wife, Giovanna, and all their clothing and household goods. Rounding out the party is his brother, Donato, also a painter — a wonderful man but a mediocre artist, the meagerness of his talent exceeded only by the meagerness of his earnings.