A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  The University also circulated Clamanges’ letter throughout Europe, not least to the See of Avignon, where it was presented to the Pope in a full assembly of cardinals. After reading a few lines, Clement’s eyes filled with anger and he exclaimed, “This letter defames the Holy See! It is wicked, it is venomous!” Denouncing it as a calumny that “does not deserve to be read in public or private,” he left the room in a rage and would neither listen nor speak to anyone. The cardinals read the letter through and, after conferring among themselves, concluded that postponement was indeed dangerous and that the Pope would have to accept the University’s program. Summoned by Clement when he learned of their conference, they advised him that if he had the good of the Church at heart he must choose one of the Three Ways. Such was his indignation at this “traitorous cowardice” that within three days, on September 16, he died of a heart attack or apoplectic stroke, or, according to his contemporaries, of “profound chagrin.” So ended Robert of Geneva, to be ultimately recorded as Anti-Pope by the Church.

  The news of his death reached Paris six days later on September 22. Here at last was the moment to re-unite the Church painlessly, without use of force or a General Council—if the election of a successor to Clement could be prevented. “Never again will there be such an opportunity,” wrote the University to the cardinals; “it is as though the Holy Ghost stood at the door and knocked.” The Royal Council immediately dispatched a message in the name of the King to the Avignon cardinals, exhorting them “in the interests of all Christianity” to postpone their conclave until they received a “special and solemn” letter from the King of France which would follow.

  Led by Marshal Boucicaut, the royal messengers galloped for Avignon, covering the 400 miles in the record time of four days. When they arrived, the conclave was already in session. The cardinals were anxious for union, but not at their own expense. They had been persuaded by the suave Spaniard, Cardinal de Luna, a former professor of canon law, that their position depended on their right of election, which must not be abridged. Divining the contents of the King’s letter, they decided not to open it until the election was accomplished. But lest they be charged with sustaining the schism, they agreed to sign a written oath binding whichever of them was elected to resign if a majority of the cardinals called on him to do so. The oath bound them to work diligently for union of the Church “without fraud, deceit or machination whatsoever,” and sincerely to examine without excuse or delay all possible ways to that goal “even to the point of ceding the papacy, if necessary.” Eighteen of 21 cardinals signed, among them the most fervent exponent of union, Cardinal Pedro de Luna of Aragon.

  In the conclave, when the name of one cardinal was proposed for election, he confessed in an agony of honesty, “I am weak and perhaps would not abdicate. Do not expose me to temptation!”

  “I on the other hand,” spoke up Cardinal de Luna, “would abdicate as easily as I take off my hat.” All eyes turned to look at the colleague, now in his sixties, who had been a cardinal ever since the stormy election in Rome that had precipitated the schism. A learned and clever man of noble birth, subtle in diplomacy, austere in private life, an expert manipulator, he was a rigid opponent of Council though an ardent advocate of union. He was elected as Clement’s successor on September 28, taking the name of Benedict XIII.

  The second French embassy heard the news on their way to Avignon. On their arrival, the new Pope assured them of his intent to pursue every means of ending the schism and repeated his statement that he would abdicate if so advised as easily as taking off his hat, which he lifted from his head in illustration. His assurances in reply to the King mounted like a ladder to Heaven. He had accepted election only to end the “damnable schism,” and would rather spend the rest of his life in “desert or cloister” than prolong it; if the King sent well-informed persons with definite proposals, he would accept them without hesitation and “execute them without fail”; he was “disposed, determined and resolved” to work for union and would accept the counsel of the King and his uncles “so that they rather than another prince may acquire the eternal glory that shall be the reward of so meritorious an effort.”

  De Luna may have been sincere but once he was on the papal throne, the duty to abdicate was fast replaced by the sense of right that supreme office breeds. The schism, like the war, was a trap not easy to get out of.

  All this time Coucy had been in north Italy conducting, on behalf of Louis d’Orléans, a financial, political, and military campaign for the sovereignty of Genoa. The offer had come out of the city’s chronic anarchy: the Grimaldi, Doria, Spinola, and other noble families, having been exiled and lacking cohesion, wanted a sovereign to restore them and deliver the city from bourgeois rule. Power swung from one bourgeois group to another, each of which installed a Doge until he was overthrown and exiled by opponents. No fewer than five Doges held office in 1393, giving way in 1394 to the return of Adorno, the Doge of the Tunisian campaign. Doges, parties, and exiled nobles exerted their various weights in the fluctuating balance of power between Florence and Milan.

  As Lieutenant and Procurator General “in trans-alpine parts” for the Duc d’Orléans, Coucy established himself at Asti, which belonged to Louis as part of Valentina’s dowry. He commanded some 400 lances and 230 archers recruited from among the best in France, and engaged an almost equal number of Gascon and Italian mercenaries. But without greatly superior numbers he could not expect to subdue Genoese territories by military conquest alone, if the local rulers were disposed to defend them. As in Normandy many years before, his strategy was to take castles and towns by negotiation backed by a show of force and assault only when required.

  The nobles who had made the original proposal came to offer him their castles, but, being “prudent and subtle” and having experience of Lombards and Genoese, Coucy did not trust too much in their promises and took care not to put himself in their power, even to the point of holding conferences in open fields rather than inside castle premises. Collaboration with the Genoese in Tunisia must have left an unpleasant impression.

  Guided by Gian Galeazzo, who arranged contacts and lent money and soldiers, Coucy pushed his way through the Italian maze, recruiting and paying mercenary companies, negotiating the terms and price for submission of castles and territories, treating with Pisa and Lucca for their non-interference, sending out envoys to other parts of Italy to gather adhesions for the future Kingdom of Adria. The paper work was substantial, and through its survival in the archives a 14th century politico-military campaign can be seen at work. Recruiting was piecemeal: Guedon de Foissac comes with 2 knights, 19 squires, and 10 archers, Aimé de Miribel with 26 men-at-arms, Hennequin Wautre with 16 archers. Six Italian companies range in size from 10 to 350 “cavaliers.” Bonnerel de Grimaut (probably Grimaldi) receives 100 gold florins for “showing the ways and means” by which the enterprise of Savona can be accomplished. Jerome de Balart, doctor of laws, and Luquin Mourre, squire, receive 100 gold florins for advice in the same project.

  The territory of Savona, which had revolted against the Doge, is the crux of the advance, requiring delicate negotiations. When Gascon mercenaries are about to subject one of its vassal towns to “fire and blood” in revenge for the killing of three of their horses, they have to be hastily bought off at a cost of 96 écus, not too much to avoid hostilities which would make the cost of conquest greater. The approaches to Savona are opened by deals with surrounding lords for permission to pass through the valleys they command. Finally, Savona with its towns and castles is secured by “secret treaties” and payment of 6,990 gold florins.

  Each castle whose allegiance is obtained is required to fly the Orléans flag and each lord is reimbursed by monthly installments on an agreed sum “until such time as the Duc d’Orléans is made master of Genoa.” Forty members of the Spinola family receive collectively 1,400 florins a month for their allegiance and agreement to billet Coucy’s forces in their towns and fortresses. Records of each transacti
on in the precise and architectural handwriting of the time make it plain that when knighthood was in flower, one of its primary interests was money.

  The notaries who drew up these agreements and the ambassadors who confirmed them had to be paid, as well as couriers to and from Paris. Wages to men-at-arms and retainers to captains of companies were recorded, likewise twenty florins to Antonio de Cove, cannoneer, to fetch a grosse bombarde from a certain lord for the siege of a castle; eighteen florins to an envoy sent by Coucy to Pavia to borrow 400 florins from Gian Galeazzo; a silver goblet and ewer to Gian Galeazzo’s secretary.

  Not surprisingly, Coucy was constantly running out of ready cash, but the banking and credit network of the time kept him in operation. It enabled him to borrow 12,000 florins from one Boroumeus de Boroumeis, merchant of Milan, to be repaid by Orléans to the brothers Jacques and Franchequin Jouen, merchant-grocers of Paris. At another time Coucy pawned jewels and plate to pay his men-at-arms until 40,000 livres were brought by Orléans’ chamberlain from Paris.

  In November, after receiving plenipotentiary powers from the King of France and the Duc d’Orléans, Coucy concluded a treaty with Savona covering a mass of rights, guarantees, and obligations almost as complex as the Treaty of Brétigny. With this in hand, he moved to Pavia to arrange the definitive terms of Gian Galeazzo’s share in the present venture and in the future Voie de Fait.

  Twenty-one years had passed since Coucy and Gian Galeazzo had fought on opposite sides in the Battle of Montichiari. Did they reminisce over old times and remind each other how each had barely escaped with his life? Or were their relations purely formal? Did they compare notes on their respective monastic foundations, Coucy’s for the Célestins at Soissons, Gian Galeazzo’s for the Carthusians at Pavia, and did the Italian Prince say, as he had elsewhere, that he intended to build one “which will have no like in the world”? He did not live to see his boast fulfilled in the famous Certosa of Pavia.

  He would doubtless have conducted Coucy through his archive of state papers and certainly through his library, whose collection had been started for his father by Petrarch. It contained the poet’s copy of Vergil as well as his own and Boccaccio’s works and Dante’s Commedia. Steadily expanded by Gian Galeazzo’s purchases to more than 900 volumes, it rivaled the library of Charles V at the Louvre and was open to bibliophiles and scholars whom the lord of Pavia liked to attract to his court. Its glories were the illuminated manuscripts he commissioned. Regardless of text, which might be Pliny or Horace, they illustrated the contemporary world in plants and animals, medical procedures, wedding processions, ships, castles, battles, banquets, and, not least, in the supreme Visconti Hours, in three portraits of Gian Galeazzo himself. The artist, Giovanni dei Grassi, surrounded by his pots of pigment and precious gold leaf, was at work on the Hours in the year of Coucy’s visit.

  Undoubtedly Coucy would have seen the rising construction of the Milan Cathedral, of which his host had laid the foundations in 1386 in pious gratitude for his successful ouster of the impious Bernabò. While Gian Galeazzo gave a monthly subsidy of 500 florins, the building was a product of the popular will, pursued with an impulse so vigorous that the pillars of the nave were already completed. Participation and funds came from all classes. The Guild of Armorers came in a body to begin the work of carrying away rubble in baskets. Not to be outdone, the Drapers followed, then the College of Notaries, government officials, nobles, and others in a steady stream of voluntary labor. Districts of the city vied with each other in contributions. When the Porta Orientale gave an ass worth fifty lire and a day’s work on the excavations, the Porta Vercellina gave a calf worth 150 lire. In the record of donations the whole of society appears: consecutive entries list three lire, four soldi from “Raffalda, prostitute,” and 160 lire from the secretary of Valentina dei Visconti, Duchesa d’Orléans.

  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 Universi
ty, “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.