Free The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbert Page A

‘master of the country’, in the words of Aeneas Silvius de’ Piccolomini who became Pope Pius II in 1458. ‘Political questions are settled at his house. The man he chooses holds office… He it is who decides peace and war and controls the laws… He is King in everything but name.’ Foreign rulers were advised to communicate with him personally and not to waste their time by approaching anyone else in Florence when any important decision was required. As the Florentine historian, Francesco Guicciardini, observed, ‘He had a reputation such as probably no private citizen has ever enjoyed from the fall of Rome to our own day.’

V
     
ARCHBISHOPS AND ARCHITECTS
     

    ‘
Never shall I be able to give God enough to set
him down in my books as a debtor
’
     
    N OTHING CONTRIBUTED more lustre to Cosimo’s prestige in the early years of his power than the General Council of the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches which he helped to persuade his friend, Pope Eugenius IV, to transfer to Florence in 1439.
    Apparently irreconcilable differences, mainly doctrinal, had kept the two great Churches of Christendom at loggerheads for six centuries; and, within the last two centuries, ever since the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade had sacked Constantinople at the instigation of their Venetian paymasters, the quarrel had grown more bitter. But now that the Ottoman Turks, who had been gnawing at the Eastern Empire for generations, were almost at the gates of Constantinople, Pope Eugenius realized that the chances of reconciliation had never been better. The Eastern Emperor, John Paleologus, had appealed for help in the name of Christ, and was even prepared to make submission to the Pope if soldiers and seamen from the Catholic west would help to save Byzantium from impending calamity. The Pope accordingly decided to summon a Great Council to meet in Italy without further delay.
    He did not only have the unity of the Church in mind. There was already another Council in session at Bâle; and this Council, called into existence by the German Emperor, had proposed various reforms in the Church and propounded doctrines which the Pope wasnot prepared to accept. He had, therefore, attempted to dissolve it. Declining to disperse, the obstinate delegates at Bâle had proclaimed their intention both of making radical changes in the finances of the Curia and of coming to terms with the Eastern Church. But the Pope was not prepared to listen patiently to suggestions of a reduction in papal income; and as for any settlement with the Eastern Church, he was determined to make it himself. So, to put an end to the messages passing between Bâle and Constantinople, the Pope issued an invitation to the Eastern Emperor to come to meet him at Ferrara.
    Towards the end of 1437 John Paleologus sailed for Venice, accompanied by the Patriarch of Constantinople and their attendant bishops, theologians, scholars, interpreters and officials – a huge concourse of delegates, seven hundred strong. The great assembly began their deliberations at Ferrara on 8 January 1438. The town was overcrowded and very cold; there were disagreements about precedence; there were quarrels about rites. The Catholic bishop refused to allow the Greeks to celebrate Mass in their own way in his churches; the Patriarch expressed his strongest disapproval of the ban; the Pope was edgy and ill at ease. There were reports that his enemies were hatching plots against him in nearby Bologna, a city which theoretically formed part of the Papal States but which, after declaring itself independent, was now under the lordship of the Bentivoglio family. The Pope was further worried by his embarrassing shortage of money. He had to pledge his towering medieval castle at Assisi as security for the large sums he had borrowed. But even so, he was obliged to stop paying the expenses of his numerous Greek guests.
    Cosimo heard of the troubles at Ferrara with satisfaction. He had been much