A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [337]
In opposition, the drive for Italy was suddenly galvanized by a new offer made to Louis d’Orléans. He was asked to accept the sovereignty of Genoa, where domestic strife had reached that baleful point at which the foreigner is invited in. Whether the scheme was inspired by Gian Galeazzo, who wanted Genoa as a port for Milan, is unknown, but he clearly favored it in the belief that under his son-in-law’s sovereignty, Genoa would be at his disposal. For Louis it was an extraordinary stroke of fortune, a foothold in the sun more achievable than his cousin Anjou’s still unrealized claim to Naples, and a major step on the way to Adria.
His first act was to send Coucy again to Avignon accompanied by his personal representative, Jean de Trie, in addition to the Bishop of Noyon and the King’s secretary as before. They were to ask again for the enfeoffment of Adria while postponing its conquest and the march on Rome for three or four years. The delay was intended to give Louis time to succeed in Genoa. Again the cardinals bargained closely—for money, for troops, for signed commitments by Charles and his brother, and other conditions which virtually precluded the Way of Force. But Clement at long last may have recognized that he was only precluding what had never been feasible. After many delays and excuses, which kept Coucy and his colleagues in Avignon for three months, they succeeded in obtaining the document of enfeoffment, to be confirmed as a Bull only when the King of France and his brother had approved the conditions. The envoys left Avignon on September 3, 1394. Two weeks later their entire effort was revealed as vain when they heard the stunning news that Clement was dead.
The schism which had raised Clement to the papacy was his executioner, by the hand of the University of Paris. Since January, when King Charles had recovered his reason, the University had been pressing hard for an audience to present its views. So far, the Duc de Berry, as Clement’s warmest partisan, had blocked any such hearing, answering the University’s appeals with violent reproaches and threats to “put to death and throw into the river the principal promoters of this affair.” These vigorous sentiments were induced by “rich presents” received from Clement, who, having learned of the University’s intentions, sent Cardinal de Luna to Paris to exert the financial persuasion that Berry best understood. At some point Burgundy must have offered his brother cogent argument to the contrary, for, in a surprising reversal, Berry suddenly replied to petitioners, “If you find a remedy acceptable to the Council, we will adopt it that very hour.”
Cession, as enunciated by Gerson, was already the University’s remedy. To give it as much public weight as possible, the faculty organized a popular referendum, with a ballot box placed in the cloister of St. Mathurin in which people were to drop their votes for a solution. From 10,000 votes counted by 54 masters of the different faculties, three solutions emerged, not including the Way of Force. Referendums do not commonly endorse an unwanted result. The Three Ways now proposed were, first, mutual abdication; second, if both popes continued obdurate, arbitration by a selected group; third, a General Council of the Church. The last was considered least desirable because a General Council was believed certain to divide into existing factions from which the schism would emerge as alive as ever.
Destined to dominate the opening decades of the next century, recourse to a Council was already a lengthening shadow. Both popes naturally detested it because