Halfway down the Danube

Pope Watch 1458, part 5: A late night encounter

In which the cardinal of Bologna seeks to give our man Aeneas a hot tip on the upcoming election. As before, this section was written in the third person, sort of like the royal 'we'; and as before, this section was suppressed. Go figure.

It was past midnight when the cardinal of Bologna rushed into Aeneas's cell and roused him, saying, "Aeneas, what do you say! Don't you know we've already got a pope? A group of cardinals met in the latrines and decided to elect Guillaume. They're only waiting for morning. I think you should get out of bed and offer him your vote before he's elected, for if he makes it without your support he'll never let you forget it. I'm not falling into that trap again. I know what it means to have the pope against you -- I endured the reign of Calixtus, who never gave me so much as a friendly look, and all because I hadn't voted for him. It's best to curry favor with a future pope well in advance, it seems. I'm giving you the advice I'm going to take myself."

Aeneas replied, "Away with you, Filippo, and your advice! No one's going toget me to vote for a man I think totally unfit to follow Peter. Far be it from me, such a sin! If the others want to elect him, let them look to themselves. My hands will be clean of the crime, my conscience won't prick me. You say it's hard to have the pope against you. I'm not worried about that. He won't murder me because I didn't vote for him, that I know. 'But,' you say, 'he won't be kind to you, he won't give you presents, he won't show you favor. You'll feel the pinch of poverty.' Poverty isn't hard for one who's known it well. I've been poor in the past, what does it matter if I die a poor man? He won't take my muses away, and they are all the sweeter when fortunes are low.

"Still I can't believe God would let the Church, his bride, perish at the hands of the cardinal of Rouen. What could be further from the preaching of Christ than a vicar enslaved to simony and lust? Divine Mercy will not turn this palace, the house of so many holy fathers, into a den of thieves or a whoring brothel. The apostleship is bestowed by God, not men. They are men who conspire to commit the papacy to Rouen; and human thoughts are but a breath -- who doesn't know that? It was well their conspiracy was made in the latrines; their plots will go down the drain! Like the Arian heresy, these most foul machinations will have a very filthy end."

(I am not making this up. The Latin is: in loco foedissimo finem accipient iniquissima machinamenta.)

"Tomorrow it will be clear that the bishop of Rome is chosen by God, not men. As for you, if you are a Christian, you will not promote to be Vicar of Christ a man you know is the arm of the devil!" Hearing these words, Filippo was too frightened to accede to Rouen.

Next: part 6, Aeneas gets Chicago on cardinal ass gluteus.