After the war with Florence, which followed the transfer of the city by Gian Galeazzo Visconti to the Florentines, 6000 Pisans had joined Ladislas's army so there was plenty of accommodation for the congress of the spiritual and lay worlds. Embassies from England, France, Bohemia, Poland, Portugal and Cyprus attended. The entourages of the Dukes of Brabant, Anjou, Burgundy, Austria, Lorraine and Holland' were there. Almost every kingdom in Christendom was represented, except Scandinavia.
There were 18 cardinals in Pisa on the day before the council opened. 4 patriarchs, 10 archbishops, 70 bishops were on scene and 80 more represented, the leaders of 70 monasteries in addition to 120 who appeared by deputy, 300 abbotts and 200 masters of theology., The Universities of Oxford, Paris, Bologna and Prague were represented, together with the Generals of the Jacobins and the Cordeliers. Of the more than 600 ecclesiastics who were present, two fifths were French. The benevolent and guiding hand of Baldassare, Cardinal Cossa, was apparent in everything, as the marchesa and her agents reached out to all the holy men, spreading his messages. intentions, wishes and all, positive interpretations of these.
On the morning of 25 March 1409, the council assembled at the church of St Martin, south of the Arno river. Arrayed in their albs and copes, crowned with white mitres, the cardinals and prelates formed in procession and moved, lurching and swaying with lawyers' solemnity across the Ponte Vecchio until they turned off to the Piazza degli Anziani. Skirting the archbishop's palace, they reached the cathedral, which had been completed nearly 300 years before. On the long seat at the level of the great altar sat the cardinal bishops, the cardinal priests and the cardinal deacons. Behind them was a picture of Christ painted by Cimabue. Facing the cardinals were the royal ambassadors who were prelates. Behind them, on both sides of the nave, glorious with their layers of black and white marble, were the seats extending down to the door of the church for prelates in order of their seniority. Stools were provided for envoys from chapters and convents.
When all had taken their places, the mass of the Holy Spirit was celebrated by the aged Cardinal of Palestrina. The council was opened.
At the end of the second meeting, after the prelates had, knelt with their heads to the ground;, mitres before them, for the length of the miserere, after the deacon and sub-deacon had read the litany, after a prayer from the Cardinal' of Palestrina, they rose. The Cardinal of Salutes, habited as a deacon, read the Gospel. The Veni Creator was sung by the entire assembly, kneeling, then they put on their mitres and took their seats. The business of the council had begun.
The presiding cardinal deputed two cardinal bishops, two archbishops and two bishops to discover whether the popes, Benedict XIII and Gregory XII, were present at the council. Accompanied by notaries, they went to the doors of the cathedral and called out to Petrus da Luna and Angelus Corrario in Latin and in the vulgar that they in person, or their fully empowered protectors, should appear at once. The call was repeated three times without result.
The two popes defaulted again on the third and fourth summonings at these sessions.
While the council deliberated in sanctity, day by day, the marchesa and her apparatus entertained its cardinals, archbishops and bishops by night. Cardinal Spina remained as Pope Gregory's legate at the court of Naples, but Rosa visited. Maria Giovanna in Pisa to help out with providing pleasure. They. used mama's `little house' in Porto Giorgio, inviting Giovanni di Bicci di Medici and his son Cosimo as their set-pieces at the parties, as prelates always found comfort in the presence of bankers.
Helene had rented a small house adjacent to, the quarters of the French delegation to the council. In Paris, in January, she had come to an agreement with Pierre D'Ailly that, if Cossa succeeded in organizing the council to give him the papacy, Cossa would make the bishop a cardinal in return for D'Ailly's active support. To establish his goodwill under the agreement, D'Ailly made an eloquently powerful appeal, before Pisa was convened, for a general council of the Church, which was heard across Europe from his sounding board of the Synod of Aix. He was a gifted orator and he asserted that, since the Church had both a natural and a divine right to its unity, it could and must call a council without papal sanction. D'Ailly, confessor to the King of France and treasurer of the Ste Chapelle, was one of the richest churchmen at Pisa, the magnet who drew cardinals to Helen's dinner parties. At more than one of these dinners, D'Ailly said to the engaged and thoughtful cardinals, `This schism has been a form of civil war within the Church and there is not a churchman today who does not cry out for its end. This council is the means, to end it, to be sure, but, when the man is, named by you as the unitary pope to bind up the wounds of Christendom, he must not be a pastoral pope. He must be a lawyer, an executive and a trained fighter who can weave the Church into one whole piece again, and he must be strong, determined and experienced in battle to be able to quell the partisan feelings among Christians.'
When he was asked to name such a man, D'Ailly would grow thoughtful, stroking his beard. `I would say there is only one such man,' he would answer. `Baldassare Cossa; who even now is beating away the threat of Ladislas so that we may complete the, business of this convention,'
Each of the marchesa's daughters had different spokesmen for Cossa on different nights – and there was not a night throughout the entire session of the council when each of them did not entertain strenuously. Rosa read to six cardinals, two archbishops and four bishops a letter from Cardinal Spina (which she had written herself) in which Spina seemed to consecrate Cossa as `the saviour of the Church who waits for our call from the field of battle to do his duty'. Cosimo di Medici called upon the cardinals for European stability, which had not existed since the schism had fractured the body of the Church. `The scourge of schism can be driven from that body,' he would tell dinner assembly after assembly, `but what have we gained unless the new pope, alone upon the throne of Peter, is able to marshal the powers and weaknesses of the organization of his Church into one seamless garment. That takes a strong man, your Eminences, a soldier rather than a pastor, an executive rather.than a theologian.'
Maria Giovanna or the marchesa would lift Cossa's name into a dinner-table conversation and Cosimo. would seize upon it, brandishing it like a flag, telling them that, `Cossa understands the problems of business. Cossa is a student of finances. Cossa is the only tailor we have to sew up the ragged purse of the Church.'
The marchesa made certain the prelates knew that, if they were firm and continually vocal in the cause of Cossa's candidacy, Cossa would not forget such advocacy. By this she moved such key churchmen as Alaman Adimar, Archbishop of Pisa, John of Portugal, Lucius Aldebrandinus and Guillaume Fillastre to look for Cossa's gratitude. Large amounts of Medici money were spent. Splendid gifts were made: Henricus Minutulus, a Neapolitan' cardinal was given two Irish stallions and six blooded brood mares from France. Francesco Ugoccione of Urbino, Cardinal Priest of the Sainted Quatro Coronati, was given a set of female triplets from the western highlands of Ethiopia. De Anna, Caracciola and Maramaur preferred to accept future benefices in return for their votes for Cossa.
I was neatly split in half by the demands of Cossa and the marchesa. I spent half my time in Pisa: Bernaba was doing an enormous business there and the marchesa wanted me to attend at least parts of every party she or her daughters gave, attend behind screens and at concealed listening posts so that I could hear everything which was being said and done on Cossa's behalf. The other, half of nay time I spent reporting it all back to Cossa in the field.
Cossa listened to my reports with his fullest attention and sometimes he would sigh and say, `I don't know, how the Church ever came to be seen as a spiritual organization.'
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Cossa and I had the war to fight. Ladislas's army would press north and we would fling it south again. During one such afternoon in the field, Cossa's forces separated eleven units of lances from the body of the Neapolitan army and demolished them, smashing heads as if they were-summer melons. The heat of the battle was succeeded by a damp, cold night. Cossa fell ill. His chest and arms became so weak that he would not move himself and seemed to be on the point of death. I held him down and, to prevent the whole camp from knowing our most guarded secret, I had to bind Cossa's mouth with a cloth, so much did he rave on about dead men and the pope's gold.
The illness lasted in diminishing force for three days; then, at last, he could travel. I took him to Siena, where
