The college of auditors sat three times a week to settle disputes for rightful possession. The charge for a furnished room with a clean bed was one and a half gulden a month. The linen was changed once a fortnight. Stabling for a horse cost two pfennigs a day; his food about eight pfennigs. Peace within the city was well kept. When there was a robbery or murder, the authorities always; made sure that these could only have happened outside the town's walls and, during the period of the council, 560 bodies were found in the lake.
The profits from the uncommon enterprises operated by the marchesa and Cossa averaged 9300 gold florins a month,, never less than 115,000 florins a year, and over 400,000 florins over the duration of the holy congress. However, at the time of the pope's arrival at Konstanz, this was all in the future.
48
When Pope John XXIII entered Konstanz, Sigismund was hundreds of miles away at Aix-la-Chapelle, called Aachen by the Germans. A few days later, he was – at long last – to be King of the Romans.
Escorted by Nicholas Gara, her sister's husband, Queen Barbara journeyed from Buda to join her husband in coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle. Sigismund had made intricate arrangements to be crowned at Aix on 21 October, so that he might appear formally as king of the Romans at Konstanz for the opening of the council. It was his plan to arrive at Konstanz before the pope, but there were difficulties. Two, of the electors told him the coronation date would be unacceptable to them, so Sigismund had to electioneer from Konstanz to Mainz to Frankfurt to Heidelberg to Wimpfen to Ansbach to Nuernburg to confer with all electors – `as if I were some little burgomaster accumulating supporters and contributors'. He had to listen to the clergy of each city intone the solemn introits again and, again: 'Behold the Lord cometh with the power and the kingdom in his hand. Let the tribes of the people serve thee and be lord over all the brethren.'
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.