per cent. You are going to be a rich man, Luigi.'
'He is a good man,' I said, `but he needs to be told what'to do. He will get into trouble if he doesn't have someone standing over him.'
`He knows that,' Cossa said amiably. 'He knows he will be dead if he doesn't do the job the way he always did it when you were telling him what to do. Isn't that right, Luigi?'
`I understand everything, Holiness. It is the most exalting thing of my life to execute the personal business of my pope and you can count on me not to fuck up.'
'Good,' Cossa said. `Am I ready now?' he asked the chamberlains. They bowed. Cossa smiled at them as though the sun itself were blessing them. He swept out of the room the chamberlains following. I stayed behind to talk to Palo thumping my forefinger into his chest.
Led by a snake of scarlet cardinals, by whited patriarchs and purpled bishops in chanted unctiousness, lawyers all, lurching and swaying to the clink of aspergilia, Pope John XXIII, beneath a blood-red mitre bordered with white, became the centre of a holy procession and was followed by archbishops and abbots, attended by great numbers of clergy, by Florentine bankers, Milanese generals, Venetian traders, and Pisan. Perugian and Parmesan businessmen, by throngs of citizens, all proceeding to the church of San Pietro Maggiore – and, after the sacrament had been administered he sat upon a golden throne so that all might kiss his feet.
He had been ordained a priest the previous morning, six days after his accession. He had been consecrated as a bishop that same Saturday, in the church of San Petronio. Cardinal Giuliano Rizzo was deacon.
The new pope went on to celebrate high mass in the cathedral, with John of Nassau and Cosimo di Medici holding the basin for him. Nassau was attended by fifty-four cavaliers dressed in crimson and azure and by eight fiddlers and five trumpeters playing sweet music.
A lofty platform with a cloth of gold was erected in the piazza against a wall of the church. Pope John XXIII was brought out and seated upon a throne and, in the presence of his sponsors, his family and the multitudes, he was crowned pope by his fellow countryman and nephew, his Uncle Tomas's boy, Arrigo Brancacci, a cardinal newly made for the occasion and as inverted and degenerate a young man as might be found in Italy.
The Archdeacon Melvini threw a scarlet robe over Cossa, conferred his papal name upon him and declared, `I invest you with the Roman Church.' The prior of the cardinal deacons removed the episcopal mitre from Cossa's head and replaced it, with the regnum, a mitre modified by two rings to symbolize the papal power in the two relevant spheres, making it a mitre and a crown. Archdeacon Melvini intoned to him, 'Take the tiara and know that thou art the father of princes and kings, the ruler of the world, the vicar on earth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, whose honour and glory shall endure throughout eternity.'
The archdeacon gave the new pope a rod, symbol of justice. He girded him with a red belt, from which hung twelve seals symbolizing the twelve apostles, a clear demonstration of papalism against episcopalism. The Pallium that sign of Papal power, was given to him by Melvini, while the cardinal bishops were kept ostentatiously in the background to prevent any suggestion that the pope received power from any cardinal or bishop. They had only elected him. What a business!
Cossa stared out beyond the crowd and wondered what was going to become of him, he told me late that night. He sat in the trap and thought, I am not the least mad among then, but I am a part of the word and the world makes no effort to be rational. Like everyone else, I think I am pacing attention to my own sanity but who can tell? What do they expect from me a man, who has learned everything he knows at the elbow of the master simoniac, Boniface IX, who milked the preferments of all the kingdoms. I have been drilled not to pass over such opportunities. Cosimo di Medici, a most religious than, and the Bishop of Cambrai, the Archbishop of Mainz, the King of France, the Duke of Anjou and the sacred college knew – everything about me and my philosophy when they rushed in to lift me upon the throne of Peter:` Now I am flung, he thought, among the superstitions of avaricious priests and an overwhelming horde of tens of thousands of clerics; bishops, curates, cardinals and prelates – all lying about among their empty wine bottles, sucking on chicken bones, nourished by the tyranny of Christianity. Here I am, he thought, marooned inside this alb, pinned under this tiara; their pope, condemned to perform like a street actor for the gullible, shuffling, and swaying towards my death, gliding towards the Church's promises of forever: chanting and intoning.
Why am I here? I am a condottiere who should be out in' battle, doing honest-killing. But I know why I am here. The woman I trusted betrayed me to the man I believed was my friend, who wants me here for every profit he can take from it. They have both declared themselves to be my enemies. I must learn how to prepare myself so that I may destroy them as subtly as they have ruined my life.
The guns in the piazza were fired. All the church bells of the city were rung. To remind the new pope that he was but mortal, tufts of tow were thrice lighted and thrice extinguished before him by six cardinals, who warned him as the fire went out, `Holy Father, thus passeth away the glory of the world.'
As soon as he was crowned pope, Cossa raised many lower clergy to higher rank in Italy to secure his own majority in any council which might be called – while, at the same time, by discouraging prelates from attending, he sought to weaken the council he had been forced to call in Rome because of Alexander's promise at Pisa to seek Church reform. War, of course, (and other hazardous conditions) prevented the Council of Rome from convening as scheduled but when it finally, met – for twenty-one days – Cossa dismissed the few prelates present and agreed to call another council at `some other time' to discuss the reform of the Church `in its head and its members', which was the evasive description of reform at that time. He had far more important things on his mind, he told me. The Medici had just included him in the most important and promising of their hundreds of other current business projects.
I said to him, `Sometimes I think you would like to be remembered in history as a businessman.'
`They are the leaders of our society,' he said blandly.
`Where do they ever lead us,' I asked him, `except to the poorhouse?'
He told me what the Medici had offered him: a model business proposition based on grabbing what someone, else had developed from nothing. The previous century had brought industrial machinery into Europe on a scale which no civilization had ever known.
Across Europe, the Cistercian order had established water-powered mills: factories which were grinding corn, tanning leather, crushing olives, making paper and performing dozens of other industrial functions. Monasteries in Sweden and Hungary, separated by thousands of miles, had almost identical water-powered systems. The Cistercians worked on a rigid timetable towards maximum industrialization.
`Most of what the marketplace needs comes from these factories,' Cosimo had explained to Cossa, `so naturally there are, always crowds in front of them. Just as naturally, the prostitutes work the same ground for their business.'
`Why not?' Cossa shrugged.
`Bernard, the Cistercian abbot, threatened to close the factories because they were attracting that sort of person. He's dead now, but what would have happened to the banking business – all business – if that had happened? Can you imagine this society returning to manual labour after we have achieved such mechanization?'
`Did the Church kill his objection?'
`Yes. But suppose it hadn't? Suppose we found ourselves with some so-called holy pope who supported Bernard against prostitution? Business could have been set back two hundred years.' He contemplated Cossa; so gravely that, Cossa told me, he thought for a moment Cosimo was going to ask him for his stand on prostitution. Instead he-said, `You have been a good friend, Your, Holiness. Therefore, even though it may become the most profitable single proposition we have ever organized, my father and I want to invite you to invest with us in a network of much advanced, versions of these factories, totally independent of the Cistercians – and when we get them going, perhaps you will even want to prevail upon the Cistercians gradually to withdraw from that kind of activity.'
Very clever, Cosimo,' Cossa said. He was always willing, to take their money, but he was never deceived by their cunning:
`We have decided to accept local investment to spread goodwill around. The local people will invest fifty per cent of the capital requirement, representing fifty shares. Our group, the prime financing source, will provide the energizing money to establish the network.'
