At last it was settled, despite the opposition of the electors of Berg and Brabant. Sigismund decided to ask the Duke of Juliers, the mayor and bailiff of Aix-la-Chapelle, to guarantee his safety with four thousand horse.
The interior of the cathedral where the pope opened the council with a high mass had been altered to accommodate the convention: Here the delegates were to deliberate solemnly for the next four years, although then all of us thought we would be there for a much shorter time. The large altar in the choir was covered with boards.
Next to this altar, next to the small sacrament house, a wooden altar had been built, in front of which rested a beautiful chair to seat the pope when he took the sacrament while celebrating mass, and where
he could sit throughout the sessions to be seen from everywhere in the cathedral. In front of another altar, called the Tagmessaltar, a seat was placed for the absent King Sigismund.
As soon as the pope had said the mass on the morning of his arrival in Konstanz, I rose and announced that the opening of the business session would take place on 3 November. This was subsequently postponed until the 5th.
My announcement established how earnest the pope was that the council must be considered as a mere continuation of the Pisan Council at which Benedict XIII and Gregory XII had been declared heretic and schismatic and had been formally deposed. If Cossa could succeed in getting the assembly to follow this view, then it had to follow that he must be recognized as the canonical pope.
Before the arrival of the King of the Romans, the electors, the ambassadors from, the courts of Europe or from any nation except Italy, or of a single representative of Benedict or Gregory, the council went into session on 5 November, Cossa was elated. `This is going to be, another paper-built Council of Rome all over again,' he said to me gleefully. `Everyone who was there today is against Church reform. We can go through all the motions and be out of here in a month's, time.'
`This is different,' I told him. `They're coming from all over Europe. You've got to give them time to get here. They have a lot of travelling to do and a lot of them wouldn't be too upset to miss a couple of weeks of straight masses and processions anyhow.'
`What are you saying? This council was built up to the heavens. If they were going to take it seriously,` they would be here, but nobody cares.' I knew that Cossa wanted desperately to believe that. For the first time, I realized how frightened Cossa was frightened ofsuch aconcentration of power around him, frightened of the future.
'We aren't exactly poor,' I told him. 'We can always retire. Let's see what happens.'
He looked at me -as if I were getting senile.
Even the people of Konstanz and the few pilgrims who had arrived for the great events were disappointed at the showing. Only 15 cardinals, 2 patriarchs, 23 archbishops and some 300 minor prelates had passed in swaying procession into the cathedral. This time, when the mass was over, I mounted the pulpit and rumbled out in a, profound voice that the first active session of the council would be held on Friday 16 November.
`It is as good a date as any,' Cossa told the marchesa as they worked over projections of income at the papal residence, formerly the bishop's palace, across from the cathedral.
`Cossa, get it out of your head that no one is coming to this. The people are starting to come in. Peace has broken out temporarily somehow so the roads are free from troops and their followers. And the weather is good.'
`It was the same two weeks ago, but nobody got here,' Cossa said insistently. `And it is also winter. The Italians are dropping into sick beds. Count Weiler says there could be an epidemic We should capitalize on that and spread the word as far and as wide as we can that it is dangerous to come to Konstanz.' The return of his fear that they would charge him, and try him, and burn him, brought on an obsession. He would not listen to anyone who, believed that the nations would come to Konstanz.
On 16 November, after the mass and the anthem, after the silent and the audible, prayers; and the litany, which was followed by the benediction and the gospel, Pope John XXIII then preached a sermon on the words `Speak ye every man the truth with his neighbour; execute the judgement of truth and peace at your gates.'
At its close he intoned the Veni Creator Spiritus. I then stood beside the pope and read the bull which set forth that the work of reform had been postponed after Pisa for three years, when it had been taken up; by the Council of, Rome. At Rome it had again been postponed because the wars had meant that relatively few delegates could attend. The bull did not itself institute reform but put it decisively on the agenda. The officers of the council were then nominated. The second session was fixed for 17 December.
The following day, a deputation of cardinals led by Pierre d'Ailly called upon the pope at his palace. D'Ailly complained officially to the pope that he was wanting in correctness and decorum. `Your Holiness the Supreme Pontiff cuts masses short. He will not give proper audiences. He avoids the processions which the people so enjoy. Most of the time he chooses to be jocose.'
Cossa stared at D'Ailly, Spina and his own nephew, his sister's boy, Brancacci, with contempt. He had made the fortunes of these men. They knew that all the endless ritual movements of the Church were what the Church was to practising, Christians. It was their entertainment! What did it matter to them who performed the movements and intoned the gibberish – except, of course, that they enjoyed seeing prelates of high rank doing these things because they could then tell their friends that they had actually prayed with so-and-so, and had been within fifty feet of the pope. By sparing his appearances, he was preserving the wonderment value of the papacy, and each time he was absent from the gargled foolishness he was only adding: to the pleasure of those occasions when he was visible to the faithful. These robbers knew that. Indeed, the people themselves knew the whole thing was a mockery of a past which had been dead for a thousand years.
`You go beyond jocosity,' he said to D'Ailly, trying to control his outrage.
`His Holiness himself must prescribe for all the world to know,' Spina said gravely, `the certain hours for the recitation of his office, for saying and hearing of mass – indeed, my Lord, – for being shriven -for attending the sick and the dying; and he must allow, of no emergency to break in upon these hours. The people worship what you stand for. They have come hundreds of miles to see you and to be put at peace by you.'
`What do I have cardinals for? You are the so-called churchmen! You do some of the work for a change! I am a lawyer, not a priest, and you knew that when you elected me your pope. I am a soldier, not a chanter of rituals.'
D'Ailly ground on. `A Roman pontiff is expected to hold secret consistories. It is the customary thing for a pope to maintain the pagnotta, the public alms collection of everything taken from his table when he has finished eating.'
`The pope is required to appoint three or four referendaries to inspect all petitions. It is only right,' Cossa's nephew, Brancacci,
'If I had turned to the referendaries before appointing you as a cardinal because my father requested it, little nephew,' Cossa spat at him, 'you would still be playing among the catamites of Naples and ignoring that there was a church in the city.'
`You Cossa!' Spina snarled. 'We are talking about you who should be holding a public audience after every mass and at vespers three times a week – if only to show that you occasionally go to mass and vespers. These are northern people who surround us; they are not complaisant Italians. They send in the greatest bulk of the income of the Church. They have paid over and over again whenever they were assessed and re-assessed, and they deserve to get from their pope what they have paid for.'
`Where lords are slack, the steward cannot be expected to be particular,' D'Ailly said smoothly. `A lord should rise before his servants and be the last to bed. Above all, his responses to any event should be couched in kindly terms lest he make enemies.
`But you do not heed your own counsel, my lords!' Cossa exclaimed, extending his hands to them palms upward, then clenching these into fists.
`Counsel – Holy Father?'
`Your ancient wisdom about making enemies. You have made a hungry enemy today.' He turned to Spina. `You must take care, Spina, lest your reputation among popes becomes as smashed as your nose.' He smiled slyly. `We really must have a long talk about that nose of yours some day. I never could believe that story of how it happened to you.' He turned to the two other cardinals. `Did you know that thirty-one men once took their consecutive pleasure upon our lord Spina's body, Eminences? Now you would not have thought he would have
