Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria elects an Anti-Pope in Rome
Louis of Bavaria had had no difficulty in creating a schism: but now he had to persuade Christendom to accept the pope he had made. This task was rendered the more thankless by the fact that he had chosen a man of negative personality, about whom his contemporaries expressed diametrically opposed opinions. Albertino Mussato praises his learning and his gifts as an administrator; others relate that after five years of married life, he left his wife against her will to enter the order of the Friars Minor. An anonymous Franciscan writer describes him as ‘a great preacher, confessor and director of souls,’ who had labored for more than fifty years for the conversion of sinners, an ascetic, a lover of holy poverty and a model of obedience. Even Villani, who did not like him, admits that his reputation was good and his life holy. But Alvarez Pelayo, the author of De planctu Ecclesiae, who had known him in the convent of Am Coeli at Rome, and seen him at work, has painted a very unflattering portrait of him. Unless this writer is disparaging him, which he probably was, Pietro da Corbara was an egregious hypocrite, who made a show of asceticism while he secretly amassed ill-gotten gains, tirelessly frequented women of doubtful reputation and ran after honors.
Whatever may be the value of this collected evidence in forming an opinion about him, Pietro da Corbara himself revealed what feelings governed his conduct towards the emperor. Instead of obeying the orders of the provincial, Giovanni da Magliano, and the legate, Giovanni Orsini, he had not left Rome when the emperor arrived, and had celebrated Mass in spite of the proclamation of the interdict. For this the chapter, meeting at Anagni, condemned him to life imprisonment. In accepting the papal crown, he was acting, according to his own account, out of consideration for Louis of Bavaria and Michael of Cesena, the Minister-General of his order, whom John XXII had deposed.
We may think of him as an honest friar, devoted to absolute poverty, grateful to Louis of Bavaria for the protection he had afforded to members of the order persecuted by the Holy See, but spineless to a degree and always ready to carry out slavishly the emperor’s wishes.
According to the theory set out in the Defensor pacis, the antipope should have set the example of complete poverty. But how could he rule Christendom without some outward show of temporal power, without a court modeled on the one at Avignon? So a Chancery, an Apostolic Camera, and a Penitentiary, with all their complicated machinery came into being. In the Chancery alone there were six abbreviators, a corrector, eleven scribes, a protonotary, five notaries, a registrar and an auditor iilterarum contradictarum. Pietro da Corbara was soon to be surrounded by chaplains, household staff, an auditor of the Rota and a lay staff consisting of a marshal, squires, sergeants, mace-bearers, janitors and two treasurers.
The Sacred College was recruited only with very great difficulty. Any Roman who had any forebodings declined the offer of the red hat.3 By IS May 1328, Nicholas V had only succeeded in collecting six cardinals who had broken with the official church or were already involved in schism. These were Giacomo Alberti, the deposed bishop of Castello; the Gennan abbot who had read the sentence deposing John XXII; the Augustinian monk Niccolo da Fabriano; the Pisan Bonifazio di Donoratico; and two Romans, Pietro Oringa and Giovanni Arlotti. Later promotions included a friar minor, Paolo di Viterbo, Pandolfo Capocci, the pseudo-bishop of Viterbo, and Giovanni Visconti who accepted the purple with an ill grace and shortly after resigned it.
The newly constituted court was lacking in universality; it was chiefly distinguished for its Italian, and more especially Roman element.
The anti-pope inevitably betrayed the ideal of holy poverty, and lived in the very luxury so condemned by the Spirituals. Inevitably he and his cardinals had at their disposal horses, liveried household servants, knights and well-equipped squires; inevitably, their tables were lavishly served.
The upkeep of a court was expensive and necessitated more financial resources than the needy Louis of Bavaria could supply. He was consequently compelled to remove from their benefices those incumbents who had remained faithful to John XXII, and to redistribute these benefices generously among the schismatics; the strongly criticized practice of pluralism inevitably flourished. I
Despite all the ridicule he brought upon himself, Nicholas V had many supporters in Rome, as we may learn from the papal registers. One Bull shows, for example, that ‘almost all the canons of St John Lateran’ had embraced his cause.Z In the rest of Italy he had a fairly closely defined zone of influence, having adherents at Milan, Cremona, Como, Ferrara, Savona, Albenga, Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia, Volterra, Chieti, Arezzo, Borgo San Sepoicro, Citta di Castello, Viterbo, Todi, Bagnorea and Camerino. In the Marches, the procurators of the towns of Fenno, Osimo, Urbino, Jesi, Fabriano, Matelica, Sant’ Elpidio and Serra de’ Conti alleged in 1331 and 1333 that their allegiance to Nicholas V was simulated and occasioned by fear. l The whole episcopal hierarchy consisted of only sixteen bishops, recruited for preference from the hermits of St Augustine and the friars minor. While, of the various prelates who had been promoted, there were only about four who took possession of their sees.
The schismatic party’s most enthusiastic supporters were to be found among the Augustinians and Franciscans. The Dominicans supplied fewer recruits, and those were placed under the direction of Cardinal Bonifazio di Donoratico.s All these friars displayed a fanatical zeal in rousing world opinion in support of Nicholas V. Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham were to collect innumerable defamatory tracts against John XXII. At Milan, friars frequently preached in public places, denouncing the pope as a heretic and excommunicate, one who was ‘deposed’ and ‘the worst of murderers.’ On the other hand, they were loud in their praises of the anti-pope. Galvano della Fiamma remarked sadly that Milan, formerly noted for the wisdom of its inhabitants, had become ‘a spring of impiety and a nest of heretics.’6 At Amelia, the people set fire to a sack of straw representing John XXII; they also chased a dog named after him, threw it in the water and drowned it. From THE POPES AT AVIGNON by G MOLLAT