Richard Condon: A Trembling Upon Rome

The university was a key to Cossa in more ways than mere academic achievement. Thousands and thousands of students had flocked there since it had been established, but Cossa was possibly; the only one who exploited every opportunity. He became scholastically accomplished and he won scholastic honours while he was turning over in his mind how the university worked and how he could use that to move his career along.

Within the university was the universitas, an association in the world of learning which corresponded to a guild in the world of commerce, a union among students possessing common interests to protect and advance. By the beginning of his fourth year at Bologna, Cossa dominated all the Cisalpine student unions – which included his own Neapolitan-Sicilian group as well as the Lombards, the Tuscans and the Romans- and several of the transalpine unions, by his bribery of the rectors who governed each union. I handled the direct bribery. Palo handled the threats. This, in addition to the amazingly personal information which Bernaba and her cortegiani amassed for him every night, about the many powerful citizens of Bologna, gave Cossa early standing with the city council and an important identity within the local Church which, in turn, reelected his growing eminence in its reports to Rome.

Cossa had his own money, never used, from his father. He had a substantial income from Bernaba' s, business. But he made a lot of money by organizing and supplying protection for the gambling houses of the city, called baratterie, and, Be bribed his way to greatness with that.

The baratterie were scattered throughout the city. They offered dice, draughts, knucklebones and skittles. Cossa arranged for Palo to form troops of street fighters from neighbouring towns and villages to begin quarrels in the gambling houses leading to violent brawls which broke up the baratterie. I would go in after the second time, it happened in each place, bringing with me outrage and sympathy, and grad; ally working out a system which guaranteed the owner total security from such disturbances, if he paid the fees.

Cossa took only 50 per cent of this weekly income. Palo and I got 15 per cent each and the rest, was divided among the troops. No one could connect any of these illegalities with Cossa. He was the model student, the most promising lawyer in the student body. He was certain to rise in the Church.

The amazing thing was that the climate agreed with all of us but, most of all, it agreed with Cossa. 'I feel like working here,' he said. 'I can do twice as much work and the food is so good that I may never eat a pizza again.'

'You don't miss Procida?' -

`I miss the freedom. But what is freedom, if it doesn't get you anywhere? I found out here, in Bologna; that I like to work. It is clear in my head that if I work, I am going to have the same freedom but I am also going to be one of the people who tells the other people what to do.'

I grinned at him. 'That's one thing you don't need,' I said, Since you could talk, you've been telling people what to do.'

Nearly all the servants of the royal and ducal courts – the diplomats, the consaglieri to great nobles, the architects and the entire tribe of lawyers were ecclesiastics. The civilization owed its development to canon law and its elaborate system of written precedents and.codes, its judicial evidence and its established procedures. The tie which bound the Church and the Law was Latin, the language of all educated people throughout Europe.

I speak Latin very well. Not as well as Cosimo di Medici but better than Cossa, who coarsened every language he spoke with a brutalizing Neapolitan accent.

Bishop Tomacelli, however, was the ultimate Neapolitan; so he had the ultimate accent. He was so devious as to be almost invisible. He was consecrated as a cardinal in 1384, and thereby was in a position to encourage the Bologna government's; appreciation of Cossa's gifts by making sure that Cossa; was invited to the only three dinners which he gave, as cardinal, in Bologna, over a two-year period. At these dinners Cossa was seated at his right hand.

When Tomacelli was elected pope on 11 November 1389, taking the name of Boniface IX, Cossa consolidated all that good will and saw that the word was spread among, the politicians of Bologna that he was the new pontiff's `nephew'. When a pope acknowledged someone as his nephew, it was always his illegitimate son. This made Cossa more powerful in the city.

Gliding forward into his papacy with smoothest affability, Tomacelli reinstated the cardinals whom Urban VI, his predecessor, had ejected, and set to work to win the temporalities of the Church.

Boniface must be explained because he was the gateway to Cossa's career,, making possible Cossa's highest rank, his great power as a condottiere, and his earliest riches. He brought Cossa together with the young Cosimo di Medici. That friendship was Cossa's ultimate fulfilment, positive and negative, and the substance of his immortality because, when Cossa was dead, it was Cosimo who commissioned Donatello to design, for, eternal placement in the baptistery at Florence, Cossa's tomb, which will honour his memory forever. Cossa in his turn, realized Cosimo's father's dream to gather the finances of the entire Church into one consolidated banking account, which they will retain for ever, you may be sure. Cosimo di Medici loved Cossa. He respected Cossa because he had had to use him so badly in his secret way. I think that speaks well for Cosimo. Other men, having used Cossa like that, would have had to detest him.

As soon as Tomacelli was made pope, he welcomed the overtures of the throne of Naples, which had paid him a fortune over the years; he sent a cardinal to Gaeta to anoint and crown the new king, young Ladislas. From that day hence it was the policy of the King of Naples to support the pope at Rome, without question, ignoring the other pope at Avignon.

Boniface sat down most agreeably with the noble families of the papal states: Este, Montfeltre, Malatesta, Alidosi, Manfredi and Ordelaffi. He convinced them that it would be to their best advantage if, they acknowledged his overlordship. Then, with ineffable bland patience, he persuaded Rome itself to abandon republican independence and to admit his full dominion. The Vatican was fortified. The papal states were rearmed and fully reinstated to their former strengths:

Although Boniface was one of the most successful popes ever to fill the chair of St Peter (from an: executive standpoint, for he took an enfeebled Church and remade it into a magnificent piece of machinery his success required much: money to reach fruition – more money by half than the Church had. For there was another. pope, Clement VII, commanding separate allegiances at Avignon, exacting his dues and tithes (and more) from his part of the obedience of Christendom. The deep schismatic wound of the Church had a mournful history. The popes had been in France for eighty-four years, but the actual schism which had produced two popes simultaneously had begun with Urban VI, Bonifaces' immediate predecessor.

I am not an ignorant man, as you have seen plainly since the beginning of this narrative. One would have immediately supposed that Cossa was highly educated and that I was untrained. But I educated myself. I used books. I studied Cossa's books and I insisted on being the only one to drill him in his studies because; had I not educated myself, he would have outgrown me and even the small influence such as I had with him would have been greatly diminished. But, further than the fact that I knew the law without being privy to its honours, I was better educated than Cossa because the only history he cared about was military history and whatever Church history was required to get his diploma.

I devoured history. Everything about history depended on money. It was the money which made the history; so I tried hard to understand money while not expecting to get any of it. Cossa, having so much of it, never had to study money. He took it for granted and, no matter how much he had, he always needed more.