The papal train moved; up again, to the valley of Klosterle. From the top, looking far down, Cossa saw the lake of Konstanz, called the Bodensee, glistening in the distance. Before them lay the city of Konstanz. `They trap foxes down there,' Cossa said.
I can paint an unforgettable picture of that fated city for any Italian who had left the sun behind him as Cossa; and I had. A strong wind drove a light snow across the lake. It fell upon the thirty towers and gateways of the walled city of Konstanz, which had a population of 6000 people on the day Pope John XXIII entered the city. Two and a half months later, by the end of the first week of January 1415, Konstanz had 20,000 people; 60,000 by the end of February the same year.
While the Council of Konstanz met, the city would be the diplomatic and political, as well as the religious, centre of Christendom. Never before in the history of the Church had the imperial chances and the Roman curia settled down, together side by side. It was to be a running event unparalleled in European history.
Pope John XXIII entered Konstanz on Sunday, 28 October 1414, just after eleven o'clock in the forenoon, from the monastery of St Ulrich, at Kreuzlingen, where we had spent the night. After morning reflection, a procession was formed. Cossa, clad entirely in white like a priest at an altar, was accompanied by his cardinals, archbishops, bishops and by the curia. He was met at the door of the monastery by the clergy, of Konstanz bearing holy relics. Four magistrates conducted the Holy Father to his white horse, richly caparisoned in scarlet, with a great bell hung around its neck, and led by Bechtold di Orsini. and Count Rudolf of Montfort zu Scheer, who stood under a canopy of cloth of gold:
White horses in red-trappings led the procession, laden with clothing bags, followed by a white hackney carrying a silver-gilt chest with a monstrance in which was the Holy Sacrament. Then followed His. Holiness, surrounded by burning tapers. Near him was a priest who scattered coins to relieve the press of the crowds. Behind the Holy Father rode `the man with the hat', a huge parasol on a, long pole embroidered with red and yellow. On top of the hat there was a golden knob and on it a golden angel, holding a cross in his hand. The hat was so wide that it protected His Holiness from sun and rain. Behind the man with the hat rode the cardinals, two and two, in long red cloaks with their servants and pages. On their heads were broad red hats with long silken bands.
The procession made its way through the Kreuzlingen gate, then through-the Standelhofen and Schnetz gateways, and along a route which led through St Paul Gasse and Plattengasse to the cathedral, where it assembled and sang Te Deum Laudamus. The bells pealed until vesper time. Cossa passed through the chapel of St Margaret to the bishop's palace, where he settled in with his senior servants. The cardinals rode on to the houses and inns assigned to them. The marchesa occupied the Blidhaus on one side of the canon's court containing the bishop's palace, facing Wessenbergstrasse.
I liked Konstanz from the moment I entered it, First of all it was a German town, the second such I had set foot in since I was a boy of ten. I thought I had become an Italian, in the long process which had followed, but I had not. I was a German and Konstanz comforted me for that.
The city was founded in the fourth century and named after the Emperor Constantius Chlorus. The bishopric was transferred from Windisch to Konstanz in 560 AD because the town was well placed for cheap water carriage by the Rhine and from the lake, having good approach roads in all directions. The lake offered supplies of fish and facilities for the easy availability of flesh, produce, fodder, beer and wine. The drinking water was pure and the air was healthy – except in winter, as far as the Italians were concerned. I have never heard so much garlic-scented coughing.
The see of Konstanz stretched from Breisgau to the Allgau, from the Bernese Oberland to the middle reaches of the Neckar. Konstanz was a Swabian free imperial town. Jews were only occasionally persecuted there, a northern fashion. Its permanent citizens were divided into eighteen guilds, from which the town council was elected annually.
By the time the full French delegation arrived, in February, there were to be 30,000 horses stabled in the town, and as many as 31 barges loaded with hay and straw were counted in a single day alongside the quay at St Conrad's Bridge. 36,000 beds were provided for transient strangers. By day and night the streets were alive with the minstrelsy of the great lords, echoing with hundreds of fifes, trumpets and bagpipes. On feast days everything gave way to jongleurs and players, to tiltings, feasts and processions. Jugglers, pickpockets, whores, lottery operators, jewellers, bakers, barbers, gamblers, pharmacists, cooks, bankers, goldsmiths, pawnbrokers, cobblers, pimps and tailors from seventy towns in Europe had rushed to this place. Chiromancers foretold. Poets sang. There were 29 cardinals, whose combined households numbered 3056 attendants. Although the average-size household was 105 people, my own numbered 126 because Cossa forced me to carry 37 waiters who belonged on his staff. There were 338 bishops from everywhere, hundreds of prelates, prebends, protonotaries, abbots, provosts, patriarchs, and hundreds of learned doctors from every university. 171 doctors of medicine with 1600 assistants hung out their name plates. Each space was utilized to hold-these people and almost every other space – and surely the best of them was the leased property of the syndicate which Cossa and the Marchesa di Artegiana owned. 5300 simple priests and scholars came to Konstanz, and 39 archdukes, 141 counts, 32 princely lords, 71 barons and 1500 knights with 20,000 squires. Ambassadors from 83 parts of Asia, Africa and Europe attended.
Pope John XXIII was established as head of the council with 24 secretaries, 12 court officers and a household which had grown to 674 persons, not including his 37 waiters.
Work was provided for those without funds repairing the city wall, widening the moat and mending streets, although there were no urgent works to be done. The really poor priests, courtiers and scholars were enabled to earn money for their living. They were paid eighteenn pfennigs a day for food and lodging. It was something. During the morning they were excused from work to get alms from priests, which were amply distributed every day. It was ordered that no one was allowed to mock at these workers or to speak ill of them.
The municipal banking monopoly was not maintained. Through intervention by the pope, the bankers of Florence, representing Europe's leading money market, were represented strongly; foremost among these was the Medici bank, whose manager, Bartholorneus de Bardis, settled in at the Haus zur Tonnen. The Florentine bankers appeared in Konstanz with great splendour and their luxury was everywhere admired. The principal coins in circulation were the schilling and pfennig although prices were fixed in gulden. Each foreign banker had to pay the town six Rhenish gulden a month for carrying out their business. In 1414, the city council had re-opened its mint which had been out of use since 1407 and, with the agreement of the ten towns around: the lake, issued pfennigs.
A small army of over 1200 whores worked Around the clock, the less gifted living 30 to a room, and in baths and in the empty wine butts which lay about the streets. There were theatricals. Bishop Weldon of Semley exhibited short plays between courses at banquets which the English held at the Haus zum Goldenen Schwert, showing The Coming of the Three Kings, The Birth of Our Lord and The Slaughter of the Innocents. There were extravagant Florentine processions. Women who could sing were objects of wonderment. The sermons of Pierre d'Ailly, as well as the official protocols and circular letters of the council and the religio-political tracts of Jean Gerson were disseminated by the thousands. The minnesinger Oswald von Wolkstein confessed in a sweet poem that he had found a paradise in Konstanz