Of the friars that made up the group I will speak later, when I tell about the next day’s meeting. For that matter, I talked very little with them at first, involved as I was in the three-man conference promptly established between William, Ubertino, and Michael of Cesena.
Michael was most ardent in his Franciscan passion (he had at times the gestures, the accents of Ubertino in his moments of mystical transport) but very jovial in his earthly nature, a man of the Romagna, capable of appreciating a good table and happy to be among his friends. Subtle and evasive, he could abruptly become sly and clever as a fox, elusive as a mole, when problems of relations among the mighty were touched upon; capable of great outbursts of laughter, fervid tensions, eloquent silences, deft in turning his gaze away from his interlocutor if the latter’s question required him to conceal, with what seemed absent-mindedness, his refusal to reply.
I have already said something about him, and those were things I had heard said, but now I understood better many of his contradictory attitudes and the sudden changes of political strategy that in recent years had amazed his own friends and followers.
Minister general of the order of the Friars Minor, he was in principle the heir of Saint Francis, and actually the heir of his interpreters: he had to compete with the sanctity and wisdom of such a predecessor as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio; he had to assure respect for the Rule and, at the same time, the fortunes of the order, so powerful and vast; he had to keep an eye on the courts and on the city magistrates from whom the order, though in the guise of alms, received gifts and bequests, source of prosperity and wealth; and at the same time he had to make sure that the requirement of penance did not lead the more ardent Spirituals to abandon the order, scattering that splendid community of which he was the head, in a constellation of bands of heretics.
He had to please the Pope, the Emperor, the Friars of the Poor Life, and Saint Francis, who was certainly watching over him from heaven, as well as the Christian people, who were watching him from the earth. When John had condemned all Spirituals as heretics, Michael had not hesitated to hand over to him five of the most unruly friars of Provence, allowing the Pontiff to burn them at the stake.
But realizing (and Ubertino may have had some share in this) that many in the order sympathized with the followers of evangelical simplicity, Michael had then acted in such a way that the chapter of Perugia, four years later, took up the demands of the burned men, naturally trying to reconcile a need, which could be heretical, with the ways and institutions of the order, and trying to harmonize the desires of the order and those of the Pope. But, as Michael was busy convincing the Pope, without whose consent he would have been unable to proceed, he had been willing also to accept the favors of the Emperor and the imperial theologians.
Two years before the day I saw him he had yet enjoined his monks, in the chapter general of Lyons, to speak of the Pope’s person only with moderation and respect (and this was just a few months after the Pope, referring to the Minorites, had complained of “their yelping, their errors, their insanities”). But here he was at table, friendly, with persons who spoke of the Pope with less than no respect.
I have already told the rest of the story. John wanted him at Avignon. He himself wanted and did not want to go, and the next day’s meeting was to decide on the form and guarantees of a journey that should not appear as an act of submission or as an act of defiance. I don’t believe Michael had ever met John personally, at least not as pope. In any event, he hadn’t seen him for a long time, and Michael’s friends hastened to paint the portrait of that simoniac in the darkest hues.
“One thing you must learn,” William said to him, “is never to trust his oaths, which he always maintains to the letter, violating their substance.”
“Everyone knows,” Ubertino said, “what happened at the time of his election. . . .”
“I wouldn’t call it an election, but an imposition!” one man at the table cried, a man I later heard them call Hugh of Newcastle, whose accent was similar to my master’s. “For that matter, the death of Clement the Fifth itself was never very clear. The King had never forgiven him for having promised to try Boniface the Eighth posthumously and then doing everything he could to avoid repudiating his predecessor. Nobody really knows how Clement died, at Carpentras. The fact is that when the cardinals met in Carpentras for the conclave, the new Pope didn’t materialize, because (quite rightly) the argument shifted to the choice between Avignon and Rome.
I don’t know exactly what happened at that time—it was a massacre, I’m told—with the cardinals threatened by the nephew of the dead Pope, their servants slaughtered, the palace set afire, the cardinals appealing to the King, who says he never wanted the Pope to desert Rome and they should be patient and make a good choice. . . . Then Philip the Fair died, again God only knows how. . . .”
“Or the Devil knows,” Ubertino said, blessing himself, in which he was imitated by all the others.
“Or the Devil knows,” Hugh agreed, with a sneer. “Anyway, another king succeeds, survives eighteen months, and dies. His newborn heir also dies in a few days’ time, and the regent, the King’s brother, assumes the throne. . . .”
“And this is Philip the Fifth. The very one who, when he was still Count of Poitiers, stopped the cardinals who were fleeing from Carpentras,” Michael said.
“Yes,” Hugh went on. “He puts them again into conclave in Lyons, in the Dominicans’ convent, swearing he will defend their safety and not keep them prisoner. But once they place themselves in his power, he does not just have them locked up (which is the custom, after all), but every day reduces their food until they come to a decision.
And each one promises to support his claim to the throne. When he does assume the throne, the cardinals are so weary of being prisoners after two years, and so afraid of staying there for the rest of their lives, eating badly, that they agree to everything, the gluttons, and on the throne of Peter they put that gnome, who is now over seventy. . . .”
“Gnome, yes, true,” Ubertino said, laughing. “And rather consumptive-looking, but stronger and shrewder than anyone thought!”
“Son of a cobbler,” one of the legates grumbled.
“Christ was the son of a carpenter,” Ubertino reproached him. “That is not the point. He is a cultivated man, he studied law at Montpellier and medicine in Paris, he cultivated his friendships in the ways best suited to win the episcopal seats and the cardinal’s hat when it seemed opportune to him, and as counselor of Robert the Wise in Naples he amazed many with his acumen. When Bishop of Avignon, he gave all the right advice (right, that is, for the outcome of that squalid venture) to Philip the Fair about how to ruin the Templars. And after his election he managed to foil a plot of cardinals who wanted to kill him. . . .
But this is not what I meant to talk about: I was speaking of his ability to betray vows without being accused of swearing falsely. To be elected, he promised Cardinal Orsini he would return the papal seat to Rome, and when he was elected he swore on the consecrated host that if he were not to keep his promise, he would never mount a horse or a mule again. Well, you know what that fox did? After he had himself crowned in Lyons (against the will of the King, who wanted the ceremony to take place in Avignon), he traveled from Lyons to Avignon by boat!”
The monks all laughed. The Pope was a perjurer, but there was no denying he had a certain ingeniousness.
“He is without shame,” William remarked. “Didn’t Hugh say that John made no attempt to conceal his bad faith? Haven’t you, Ubertino, told about what he said to Orsini on the day of his arrival in Avignon?”
“To be sure,” Ubertino said. “He said to him that the sky of France was so beautiful he could not see why he should set foot in a city full of ruins, like Rome. And inasmuch as the Pope, like Peter, had the power to bind and to loosen, he was now exercising this power: and he decided to remain where he was, where he enjoyed being. And when Orsini tried to remind him that it was his duty to live on the Vatican hill, he recalled him sharply to obedience and broke off the discussion. But I have not finished the story of the oath. On disembarking from the boat, John was to have mounted a white horse, to be followed by the cardinals on black horses, according to tradition. Instead he went to the episcopal palace on foot. Nor have I ever heard of his riding
