days later. The Church was never the same again, thank God. Benedict X was elected pope but he died within ten months. A relentless bargaining conclave followed, which took months to elect Clement V he was Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a man who had never set foot in Italy and as it turned out, never would. He was controlled by the King of France:
Clement V was crowned at Lyons in November 1305 but there were a lot of bad omens. During his procession he was thrown from his horse, a wall fell on him and w rare jewel in his crown was lost. One of his brothers and ten barons lost their lives under that wall. He settled at Avignon, finally, in 1309, and was succeeded by six French popes who, at the will of the French king, remained in France. The Church was still under a single papacy, three quarters of a century away from the schism, but it wasn't until 1377, sixty-eight years later, that the papacy returned to Rome, when Gregory VI went to Italy to save the papal states for the Church; he died suddenly in Rome, probably poisoned.
Of the sixteen cardinals in his college, eleven were French, four were Italian, and one was Spanish. The city magistrates warned the cardinals that their lives would be at stake if an Italian pope were not elected. The Romans were desperate lest the papacy should return to France. They had become poor people in an Italian country town which had grass growing in its streets since their big business had been moved to Avignon. They had missed out on the profits from about two million pilgrims to Rome since Clement V was elected and the French had got all that money. As the cardinals entered the upper. storey of the building to hold their conclave a prodigious electrical storm came on. The wild-eyed Roman mob; stirred up by the thought of the money they might lose for ever if the papacy remained outside Rome, pressed upon the cardinals on their way into the building, screaming for an Italian pope, chanting,
The conclave chose the safest-pope – Archbishop Bartolomeo Prigano of Bari, a Neapolitan who had been vice chancellor at the University of Avignon. He was a small, fussy man who disapproved of everything, but most of all he disapproved of French curial extravagances. At Avignon, he would fling inkwells at the walls in frustration, yelling that the cardinals were turning the Church into a pawnshop. Prigano took the name of Urban VI. When this petty bureaucrat realized that the awesome, unknowable duties of the papacy had fallen upon him, his sanity slipped its leash. Total madness came only a short time later. The cardinals had chosen him swiftly but there are some Church histories which say that Prigano had been forced upon them by the murderous mob. That was not so. Prigano had been one of their curia through the old days at Avignon, When he was consecrated, all of them gave, him homage and got many favours from him. The guardian at Sant' Angelo had strict orders not to give up the keys to the new pope until six cardinals still at Avignon consented, and those six ordered that the keys be placed in Urban's hands. There was not a single objection or hesitation or dissatisfaction with the election of Urban VI until he held his first consistory and attacked the cardinals with ferocity, screaming at them in street Neapolitan, venting the spleen accumulated over all of his years in the chancery at Avignon against their simonies: He told them there would be no more shares in the sevitia for them, an impossible condition for cardinals because it attacked their right to an assured unearned income. The servitia was equal to one third of the income of all of the bishops in Christendom. At the first consistory he singled out each cardinal in turn, reviling him individually and by name. He cited the instances of their corruption. He limited their food and drink. He forbade their acceptance of pensions, provisions and gifts of money.
Of course, he doomed himself. One by one, the cardinals left Rome and assembled at Agnani; a fated and fateful city for the papacy. The same college of cardinals which, had just elected Prigano now met and voted the election null and void on the ground that they had been coerced into electing him in fear of the violence of the Roman mob.
It seems hard to believe but they elected in his place a brute named Robert, Cardinal of Geneva – he who was called. the Butcher of Cesena because he had ordered his troops to put 3000 women and children to the sword when they objected to the rape of sixty women by his transient soldiers. The Butcher took the name of Clement VII, whereupon Urban VI excommunicated him, then he excommunicated Urban, and the great schism of the Church had begun. There were two popes; who ruled Christendom simultaneously: – Urban in Rome, Clement at Avignon. The Cossa family's advocate, Piero Tomacelli, succeeded Urban as Boniface IX. To restore the weakened Church Boniface undertook the sale of
offices and benefices. As I have said before, much money was needed. The ordinary income, such as Peter's Pence, was grossly insufficient. Papal expenses' were higher than they had ever been. In addition to a pope's usual duties-fixing points of doctrine and discipline, granting dispensations, confirming, benefices and maintaining manifold external relations with foreign courts Boniface had an immense amount of work to do as the ultimate spiritual and temporal court of appeal.
In 1350, the period between Jubilees – the times at which special indulgences were granted and pilgrims flocked to Rome – had been reduced from one hundred to fifty years by Clement VI. The period was reduced still- further; to thirty-three years, the length of the life of Christ, by Urban VI, who appointed 1390 to be a Jubilee year. Boniface XI reduced the period to ten years; he reaped enormous wealth from the Jubilees of 1390 and 1400. He never flinched from prostituting the spiritual to the temporal.
Under his rule, simony reached its great climax. He multiplied the sale of indulgences. It was useless for a poor man to appear before a papal court of law. Income for the Church was sought from cacti and every source. Everything, even a signature, had to be paid for: if one man had bought a place on the ladder of influence and a second man made a better offer, the second offer was accepted also, the grant was antedated and the first man lost; his place. Although gorged with money, to his dying day Boniface was never filled. He piled tax upon tax, graft upon graft, simony upon simony. He taxed the papal states, demanded fees for appointments and annual dues from those ordained to political office. He appropriated the entire income from benefices and brought all benefices under papal patronage. He appropriated the property left in the vast estates of cardinals and bishops when they died.There were special taxes for alienation from holy orders, for the creation of new orders and congregations; for personal honours and promotion, and for any other privilege.
Boniface's fiscal policies were typical of his country at the tithe. Italy was sunk in vice and violence. The common man cast about frantically to achieve his own destruction. There was little devotion in the Church. Money was the deity. The laity; had no faith, no piety, no modesty and no moral discipline. Men cursed their neighbours. Most people's hope had failed them because of the sins they saw in high places.
In the ninth year of Cossa's studies at Bologna, when he was twenty-two years old, something happened which changed our lives for ever
We had received as letter from Cossa's father with news of everyone – at Procida, which always elated Cossa (and me), so we had had a little party, drinking wine and reading the letter again and again, with Cossa remembering two stories for every name which his father mentioned in the letter. Therefore, I was sleeping well (however alertly) in the hall outside Cossa's door – my preferred place of rest – when Bernaba sent one of her girls, Enrichetta, a luscious thing with a body like a pasta statue, to tell me to come at once to Castelleto Street. Enrichetta and I went out into the black night, moving through alleys to avoid patrols, and, on the way – I will never forget it – we did it standing up in an arcade. I am still convinced that Emrichetta was in love with me during the time it took her to turn the trick.
Bernaba took me into her room and locked the door. She seemed awestruck a condition which I had thought to be unattainable by this dear woman. `Franco, listen to me,' she said, almost piteously eager to shift whatever, she knew to somebody else, `I have a papal agent drunk in there, Giovanni Brisoni, a papal pawnbroker. In wine, the truth – right? Well, he told me that a shipment of gold has left the Vatican. It will pass through Bologna in three days' time on the way to Venice.'
I didn't understand what she, was implying. I didn't make the connection.
`Franco! For Christ's' sake! A mule train carrying sacks of gold made to look as if they were sacks of grain. The soldiers are dressed like farmers. They are so sure the ruse will work that the escort is even smaller than it should be.'
`How much money?'
