`He would refuse?'

`He wants only to serve God and his pope where God has shown him that he is meant to serve, my Lord. Therefore, because I have his trust and yours, he has asked me to tell you that his support – all of it – will be put behind your candidacy.'

Filargi stared at her steadily, without expression. His crinkled face with its horny skin made him seem like a gentle lizard upon a rock in the warn sun.

`Cardinal Cossa wants to serve you,' the marchesa continued simply. `More than anything else, he wants me to make that wholly clear to you. He offers his services to you humbly, as your first cardinal, as your administrator of the curia and the Church through-out Christendom as military protector of your person and of the papal states, as steward and cherisher of the Church's treasures everywhere,; and as the host to your serenity.'

Two small tears rolled down Filargi's leather cheeks. `Lazy girls,' he called out, `fetch me any jewel chest.' In moments one appeared with an iron-bound chest. He scoured out a key from a hidden pocket of his dress and unlocked the chest set before him. He opened its lid. It was filled with gold jewellery which shone blindly, set with precious stones.

`My lady; Decima he said with emotion, `I ask you to choose the ornament which most pleases you. You have brought to me that which honours all the dead of my family and which will exalt my spirit: to eternal salvation.'

Although the marchesa did not hesitate, she did not appear to have considered which jewelled item she would choose, but her ruffian's eye had decided which object would most benefit herself and, her heirs by choosing a gold ring bearing a sapphire as blue as the Virgin's robes within a setting of diamonds.

`I thank you, my lord,' she said humbly.

27

The next session of the Council of Pisa was held on Saturday, 15 June 1409, beginning with the celebration of high mass by Philippe de Thury, Archbishop of Lyons. The sermon was preached by the Bishop of Novara on the appropriate text, Eligite meltorem et eum ponite super soturn, exhorting the cardinals to proceed to the unanimous choice of a good and worthy ruler. This was now necessary because the council had finally deposed both schismatic popes, Gregory and Benedict.

At vespers, the twenty-four cardinals, including Baldassare Cossa, entered the archbishop's palace, 110 yards west of the leaning tower, and were there immured in conclave under the guard of the Grand Master of Rhodes, and other prelates, not to issue thence until a new pope should have been chosen. Fourteen of the cardinals had belonged to the, obedience of Gregory, ten to that of Benedict.

Throughout the city, stories of exceptional bribery were rife, that every cardinal had, promised to the servants of others, that the French court had lavished money, that the cousin of the King of France, Louis de Bar, Cardinal of St Agatha, might be chosen, or the 'domestic prophecy' of Cardinal de Thury might be fulfilled, or that Simon de Cramaud, Patriarch of Alexandria, might at last obtain the tiara for which he had sighed so long and worked so ardently.

Two halls and two chapels were set apart for the conclave in the larger chapel, cells were constructed in which the cardinals might eat and sleep; the smaller was reserved for discussion and for the election of a pope.

On the first day nothing was done but settle in with greatest comfort. On the fourth day, after sufficient lip service had been paid to the ambitions of the more earnestly yearning cardinals, the conclave turned to Baldassare Cossa. After a result of scrutiny was announced, it was customary for the cardinals to sit and talk together in case any wished to change his mind and transfer the vote he had given to another – for in this way they could more easily reach an agreement. This procedure was omitted after the submission of Cossa's scrutiny.

Cossa stood before them and addressed his response to the senior cardinal. 'Your Eminence of Ostia,' he said gravely, `your opinion of me, as I understand it, is much higher than my own, when you attribute to me any more than the qualities which should be held by a soldier of the Church: I am not ignorant that our own imperfection is far more, general. I realize that our failings in these crucial days of schism include a lack of vital religious capacities which evolve out of a life of meditation and prayer; something which has not been my lot in my life of action. These failings must declare me to be utterly unworthy. Therefore, with fallen heart over my weaknesses which must bar me from ever reaching the glory of the papacy, we must disobey the summons of the Holy Ghost which was made with your voices.’

There was a great outburst of protest in the chapel but Cossa quieted this when he said, `If following the dictates of your consciences which seek to heal the wounds suffered from this tragic schism, you will attribute the summons of a single, binding pope, to God Himself, you will cast your eyes about you seeking the holiest man among you. That man of holiness whom we should raise up as pope does indeed sit among us. He is Petrus Filargi, Archbishop of Milan and Cardinal of the Twelve Apostles. Beyond his precious sanctity, I remind you that he is neither Frenchman nor Italian and is by that freedom alone a healing balm for Christendom. He is known by all of us to be an able man and a most active, prelate in the affairs of this historic council. He might not know who were his father or his mother but that will save him from the trouble and temptation of providing for his relatives. He might not be profoundly based in canon and civil law, as he is a scholar of theology, but it was no ordinary man who could win the confidence and trust of that astute tyrant, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Petrus Filargi truly fits the throne of Peter, for he is able, saintly and proven to be incorruptible.'

The new pope, Petrus Filargi, took the name of Alexander V. The news of his election was received with joy in Milan, Florence and Bologna, but not in Rome, which was occupied by Ladislas's troops.; The election of Cardinal Filargi was also a triumph for France because both he and his chief adviser, Cardinal Cossa, were devoted to the French alliance – that confraternity of French cardinals, the King of France and the papacy which managed to prosper so well.

Although the Council of Pisa had deposed Popes Gregory and Benedict and had elected Pope Alexander to end the great schism in the Church, there was still much before the council to do. There was the desperate question of Church reform if the council were to satisfy the hopes of Christendom, from Scandinavia to Greece, from England to Warsaw. While the council sat, most of Europe had discussed little else but the. reform of the Church but, until that reform actually happened, the multitudinous Church outside was ruled by a minuscule handful of the Church within the cardinals and the curia, without whom nothing could be done which had to be done.

The reform for which the Christian world had clamoured for over a century, for which the prelates and priests of the Church in every country but Italy had wanted for perhaps even longer, was many-sided. It involved the elimination of images and pictures from the churches, and an end to the solemnization of new festivals and of the building of yet more sacred edifices. Reform demanded an end to the canonization of saints and the prohibition of all work on feast days. Reform called for an end to simony not only within the papacy, the college and the Curia, but by parish priests who milked their poor parishioners. This Churchly vice had, put many of the faithful under ban of excommunication because they were unable to pay for justice. Corpses lay in the field ‘unhouseled, unannealed, no reckoning made because relatives could not pay priests for a Christian burial. However, despite the continuing demand for Church reform, the Council of Pisa felt that, by electing a new pope, they had done the one-thing which was absolutely needful.