A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [216]
Papal power, raising him to authority over the high-born cardinals, went instantly to Urban’s head. From a humble unspectacular official totally unprepared for the papal throne, he was transformed overnight into an implacable scourge of simony, moved less by religious zeal than by simple hatred and jealousy of privilege. He publicly chastised the cardinals for absenteeism, luxury, and lascivious life, forbade them to hold or sell plural benefices, prohibited their acceptance of pensions, gifts of money, and other favors from secular sources, ordered the papal treasurer not to pay them their customary half of the revenue from benefices but to use it for the restoration of churches in Rome. Worse, he ordered these princes of the Church to restrict their meals to one course.
He berated them without tact or dignity, his face growing purple and his voice hoarse with rage. He interrupted them with rude invective and cries of “Rubbish!” and “Shut your mouth!” He called Cardinal Orsini a sotus (half-wit), and moved to strike the Cardinal of Limoges, only stopped by Robert of Geneva, who pulled him back, crying, “Holy Father, Holy Father, what are you doing?” He accused the Cardinal of Amiens, when acting as mediator between France and England, of accepting money from both sides and prolonging discord to keep his purse filled, causing that Cardinal to rise and with “indescribable haughtiness” to call His Holiness a “liar.”
Carried away by self-assertion, Urban plunged into the secular affairs of Naples, announcing that the kingdom was badly governed because the ruler, Queen Joanna, was a woman, and threatening to put her in a nunnery or depose her because of failure to pay the dues of Naples as a papal fief. This gratuitous quarrel, which he pursued with venom, was to provide a base for his enemies.
The feelings of the men who had raised Urban over their own heads probably cannot be adequately described. Some thought that the delirium of power had made the Pope furiosus et melaneholicus—in short, mad. Rages and insults might have been borne, but not interference with revenue and privilege. When Urban flatly refused to return to Avignon as arranged, the crisis came. Rather than try, as once before with an obstreperous Pope, any half-measure requiring him to sign “Capitulations” of his authority, the cardinals decided on the fatal course of removal. Since there was no procedure for ousting a Pope for unfitness, their plan was to annul the election as invalid on grounds that it had been conducted under duress from mob violence. Unquestionably they had been terrified when they elected Urban, but equally clearly they had decided to elect him before a threat was heard.
The first hints of an invalid election were circulated in July 1378, and the cardinals began assembling military support through the Duke of Fondi, a nobleman of the Kingdom of Naples. In the meantime, the Romans and their armed forces rallied to Urban, who had won their support by his refusal to go back to Avignon. He reinforced his position by concluding peace with Florence and lifting the interdict, to the jubilation of the people. His messenger bearing the olive branch for once made the papacy popular with the Florentines. Lines were being drawn. Guarded by the Breton mercenaries of Sylvestre Budes, who had been with Coucy in Switzerland, the cardinals moved out of Rome to the papal summer resort at Anagni. Here on August 9 they issued a Declaration to all Christendom pronouncing Urban’s election void on the ground that it had been conducted in “fear of their lives” to the sound of “tumultuous and horrible voices.” After declaring the Holy See vacant, they rejected