A Distant Mirror (99 page)

Coucy concluded two treaties with the lord of Milan, one providing for a joint force to take Genoa, the other concerning the
Voie de Fait
. In the second treaty Visconti undertook to provide a certain number of lances if the King of France came to Italy in person, and a more limited number if the leader were Orléans or—which was hardly likely—the Duke of Burgundy.

The reason for the reference to Burgundy remains hidden in the enigmatic statecraft of Gian Galeazzo. He was a ruler who always played both sides in pursuit of his goal and was prepared to abandon one for the other when necessary. In his need of an ally against Florence and Bologna, he could see that France, with an unstable King and a struggle between uncle and nephew for control of policy, was a shifting proposition, and the
Voie de Fait
, since the death of Clement, a fading prospect. While negotiating with Coucy, he was already mending relations with his technical overlord, the Emperor Wenceslas, who, like himself, needed support against domestic enemies. To confirm his imperial title, Wenceslas would have to undertake that hazard of emperors, the journey to Rome for formal coronation by the Pope. Visconti wealth would make it possible. In exchange for 100,000 florins in 1395, Wenceslas sold Gian Galeazzo the title of hereditary Duke of Milan with sovereignty over 25 cities. As the first such title in Italy, it marked the line where the age of city-states passed into the age of despots. It did not help Wenceslas, who was charged by his opponents
with illegally alienating imperial territory and was ultimately deposed before ever becoming secure enough to make the journey to Italy.

While Coucy pushed forward the campaign against Genoa, another deal was arranged behind his back. A coalition of Florence, Burgundy, and Queen Isabeau induced Doge Adorno, as a means of keeping himself in office, to offer the sovereignty of Genoa to Charles VI, effectively thwarting Orléans and Visconti. On the edge of renewed madness in 1395, Charles could be manipulated. In the “grievous March” of that year, on being informed that the King had bought out Louis’ interests in Genoa for 300,000 francs, Coucy discovered himself acting for a different principal. On the crown’s instructions, he now negotiated a truce with the Doge Adorno, who promptly broke it by laying siege to regain Savona. In the course of the defense Coucy was immobilized for four days in July by a “wounded leg,” which may have been a fresh injury or an effect of the old injury suffered ten years before. He can be glimpsed only intermittently in the documents, like a patch of sky through moving clouds.

By August the siege of Savona was raised, the sovereignty of Genoa confirmed in the King of France, and Coucy’s campaign brought to an end. He is last seen with a suite of 120 horsemen leaving Asti on October 13 and reaching Turin the same evening on his way to yet another crossing of the Alps. On his return to France, Louis welcomed him with a gift—or a payment—of 10,000 francs “to help him over all he had suffered in Italy.” In fact Coucy had gained for the crown of France, if not for the Duc d’Orléans, the long-sought foothold in Italy. French rule of Genoa was formally established in the following year. Overthrown by a popular uprising in 1409, it left a claim which Charles’s and Louis’ descendants, Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, were still pursuing into the 16th century.

While Coucy was engaged against Genoa, court and University coalesced in a concerted effort to unseat Benedict XIII. Although they knew him well, the French were offended by the election of a Spaniard, and he, though nobly born, did not have the kinship with Valois, Bourbons, and Counts of Savoy which had made Clement, from the French point of view, “one of us.” An end to the schism became the more imperative as the tocsin for crusade rang more insistently. Hungarian ambassadors were on their way to France; the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria had already arrived with a tale of woe.

Just as the humble Archbishop of Bari turned into a bully overnight as Urban VI, so the subtle and diplomatic Pedro de Luna turned
righteous and inflexible as Benedict XIII. A heart-rending plea by the University not to put off “for a day, an hour, an instant” his intention to abdicate left Benedict unmoved, although the rhetoric of which Clamanges was again the author would have penetrated a conscience of granite. By resigning he would gain, wrote the University, “eternal honor, imperishable renown, a chorus of universal praise and immortal glory.” If he postponed by one day, a second would follow, then a third. His spirit will weaken, flatterers and place-seekers will come with sweet words and gifts; under the mask of friendship, “they will poison your mind with fear of evil consequences and cool your zeal for this noble and difficult enterprise.” The sweetness of honors and power will take hold. “If you are ready today, why wait until tomorrow? If you are not ready today, you will be less so tomorrow.” The peace and health of the Church are in his hands. Should his rival refuse to abdicate when Benedict does, he will have condemned himself as “the most perverse schismatic,” and proved to all Catholics the necessity of ousting him.

Unilateral abdication did not appeal to Benedict, nor was he persuaded that its moral effect could dislodge his rival. When Chancellor d’Ailly and his ardent and vocal colleague Gilles Deschamps came to Avignon as the King’s ambassadors to add pressure, they found that the former De Luna’s easy promise of taking off his hat had given way to a Spanish stubbornness bred “in the country of good mules.”

Pressure was augmented in Paris. In February 1395 a conference of 109 prelates and learned clerics was convened in the King’s name to decide on how to end the schism. After two weeks’ deliberation, attended by archbishops, bishops, abbés, and doctors of theology, it voted 87 to 22 for the Way to Cession and renunciation of the Way of Force. Not entirely a matter of conviction, the vote reflected the ascendancy of the Duke of Burgundy. Prelates and theologians dependent for place on the patronage of one or another of the royal Dukes watched carefully the trend of events. Accordingly, as Burgundy or Orléans rose in power—usually Burgundy when the King was mad and Orléans when he was sane—their attitudes shifted, preventing a coherent policy.

The majority of the conference now renounced the
Voie de Fait
. It was declared “too perilous” and likely to involve the King of France in wars against all those obedient to the “Intruder” in Rome. Even if Boniface were defeated, said the prelates, the nations of England, Italy, Germany, and Hungary would still not accept Benedict XIII and “the schism would be stronger than it is now.” The only hope was for Benedict to put his abdication in the hands of the King of France, who
would then call upon his fellow sovereigns of the other obedience to obtain that of Boniface likewise. Despite the obvious flaws in this procedure, a decision for cession was clearly what the crown wanted. Without a French Pope as its beneficiary, the Way of Force had lost its attraction.

Adria and conquest of the Papal States vanished with the
Voie de Fait
, and with it any prospect for Benedict of ousting his rival by force of French arms. To convince him of this, the crown dispatched the most imposing embassy ever sent to Avignon, consisting of all three royal Dukes—Burgundy, Berry, and Orléans—supported by ten delegates of the University. Though softened by splendid gifts of Burgundian wines and Flemish tapestries, the message was a conscious assertion of royal will over the Church. It met an opponent unsurpassed in the techniques of evasion.

The issue was debated in polished discourse at a series of audiences, each opening on an appropriate text, with the usual “flowers of rhetoric” and many canonical and historical citations by each side. As a former professor at Montpellier, Benedict was not to be put down by the academics from Paris. While continually reasserting his willingness to work until death for union, he refused to be cornered into abdicating without a bilateral guarantee. Since here was the glaring weakness of the French case, he may have suspected that the French wanted him out mainly in order to install a French Pope in his place—and he may have been right. He twisted and evaded as the hunters pursued. When they demanded to see the text of the oath signed by the cardinals in conclave, he first refused, then offered to tell the substance in secret, then, when further pressed, to read it aloud without handing it over. When that too was rejected, he claimed a kind of executive privilege on the ground that resolutions of the conclave could not be communicated to anyone.

Forced to yield, he proposes a joint conference of both popes and both sets of cardinals. The visitors say this is impossible because of the Intruder’s obstinacy, and that Benedict’s voluntary cession is what is wanted. He asks for the proposal in writing. Gilles Deschamps replies that that is not necessary since it consists of but one word of two syllables: “cession.” The Pope asks for time to reflect. During the pause, Burgundy invites the cardinals to give him their opinion “in good conscience as private persons, not as members of the Sacred College.” They favor cession nineteen to one, the lone opponent being the Cardinal of Pampeluna, another Spaniard. When the cardinals put their opinion in writing, Benedict forbids them to sign the document. At an audience from which he excludes the University delegates he informs
the Dukes that if they will support him, he will abandon to them the conquest and possession of the Papal States. They are deaf to the proposal.

The discussions have now lasted for two months, with the visitors coming across the river every day from Villeneuve, where they are staying. They discover one morning that during the night someone has burned the famous bridge by setting fire to boats moored to the piles. At once fearing “treason” and attack, they seize arms, but on second thought suspect the Pope. If the Spaniard is laughing on the other bank, it is privately. Swearing he has had nothing to do with the fire, he sends workmen to repair the bridge and arrange a temporary pontoon of boats tied together, hardly suitable for proud Dukes to ride across in dignity. The only alternative is crossing by boat, which is slow and insecure against the rushing waters. Disgusted, the visitors after consultation with the cardinals decide on one last appeal, which Benedict, still affirming his devotion to union, rejects. Defeated, the French depart after three months of empty effort. The schism remains unresolved.

With no assurance that his abdication would end the schism, Benedict cannot bear all the blame. Astonishingly, he won a champion in Nicolas de Clamanges, who had so furiously prophesied doom if the popes postponed abdication by a single day. In a decision which caused a storm at the University he now accepted office as Benedict’s secretary, and was later to write of him that “though gravely accused, he was great and laudable and I believe him to have been a saintly man nor do I know anyone more praiseworthy.” Did Nicolas act from conviction or was he bought? Since his motives are lost to us, let us believe them sincere.

Outraged by the outcome of its efforts, all the more because Benedict’s original words had nourished high hopes, the University proposed two radical measures: it advised the King to withhold from Benedict the ecclesiastical revenues of France, a step amounting to a break with Avignon; and it advised the cardinals that if Benedict continued to refuse cession, he should be deposed by a General Council. The crown was not yet prepared to withhold obedience, though it was to come to that stage three years later. Fourteen years were to pass before Europe could achieve the momentary unity for a General Council, which even then did not succeed.

The University kept up its campaign. Letters went to rulers and other universities urging them to insist on cession by both popes. Doctors of Theology journeyed forth on horseback to preach in towns and provinces against the evils of the schism. In the course of
denouncing the corruptions of the Church, they spread—with results they may not have intended—the demand for reform. The French crown sent envoys to the King of England and princes of Germany urging the way of mutual cession, and received everyone’s earnest concurrence with as yet little practical result. Benedict XIII resisted every pressure. For nearly thirty years to come, despite French withdrawal of obedience, siege of Avignon, desertion by his cardinals, deposition by two Councils, and the rivalry of three other popes, he would not step down. Retreating to a Spanish fortress, he died in 1422 at the age of 94 still maintaining his claim.

Unexpectedly, the war, if not the schism, gave promise of ending at last. In March 1395, Richard II proposed a marriage between himself and Isabelle, daughter of the King of France. He was 29 years old, she six. As a way of by-passing the unyielding disputes to gain peace by other means, it was a bold move, even if peace was not its only motive.

Richard II had no use for what he termed this “intolerable war,” nor did he share the animosity for France it had bred in most Englishmen. On the contrary, he admired France, desired to meet her King, and wanted peace in order to strengthen himself against his domestic opponents. He had ruled constitutionally for seven years since his rough treatment by the Lords Appellant, but his autocratic nature, intensified by that humiliation, craved absolute monarchy and the subjection of his enemies. Kingship, which can corrupt or improve, seems to have had a generally one-sided effect in the 14th century: only Charles V gained wisdom from responsibility. Richard was moody, profligate, despotic, emotional, and temperamentally if not physically aggressive. When his wife, Anne of Bohemia, sister of Wenceslas, died in 1394, he indulged the passion of his grief by ordering the royal manor of Sheen to be destroyed because she had died there. At her funeral, believing himself insulted by the behavior of the Earl of Arundel, one of the Lords Appellant, the King seized a staff and struck him to the ground.

Anne had been a sweet-natured woman of his own age who inspired, unlike her unhappy brother, only the most benign comments in the chronicles. Her death may have loosened some restraining influence, besides leaving Richard without a direct heir. To ensure his line, a second marriage was advisable, but the choice of a six-year-old child who was expressly spared consummation of the marriage until she was twelve suggests that an heir was not Richard’s primary object. He wanted reconciliation with France in order to close off opportunities to
the “boars” of England and, quite specifically, to gain French support, if need be, against them. His envoys were instructed to obtain assurance from the French King and from his uncles and brother “to aid and sustain Richard with all their power against any of his subjects.”