This led to a discussion of the bitter exchanges between Rome and Constantinople over the various bones of contention: celibacy of the clergy, areas of doctrine relating to the Holy Ghost and, not least, the way the Normans in Apulia and Calabria were still inducing the local populations away from their adherence to the Orthodox creed by insisting Masses be said in the Latin rite.
‘To be ignored, Your Holiness,’ Hildebrand insisted. ‘Let the patriarch do as Rome instructs. He ranks as an archbishop and no more. We have disputed with Constantinople many times in the past and I daresay this, like other disagreements, will be resolved by acquiescence.’
‘It may be unpleasant to consider,’ said Desiderius, ‘but consider it we must. What can Ascletin have promised Henry and his council that would gain him imperial support?’
Pope Victor’s face registered his discomfort at being brought back to that which he wished to avoid. There was selfishness in this: much as he cared for the future of the Church, what these two close advisors wanted to discuss would only happen after he had gone to meet the Almighty. It was a matter on which he could have no influence, so he changed the subject again.
‘I have had a communication from the Count of Apulia, asking if he can be granted an annulment of his marriage to Alberada of Buonalbergo on the grounds of consanguinity.’
The Pope was greeted with silence then, this being a situation where morality and doctrine tended to clash with the more temporal needs of the Church, and such matters required careful consideration before any answer could be given, even a verbal opinion, which was hardly binding.
‘To what purpose?’ asked Hildebrand finally.
‘He does not say.’
‘What does he say?’
‘That they are cousins,’ Victor replied, ‘that they fall within the prohibited degree of consanguinity and that he feels their union is impious.’
‘Something,’ Desiderius ventured, ‘it might have been proper to consider before their nuptials and the birth of his two children.’
That remark left the trio deep in thought. An annulment was not out of the question, especially where the rules for such things had been breeched, as in this case they clearly had, but if doctrine impinged, politics had a greater influence. Robert Guiscard would pay handsomely for such a service and he, being powerful was a man it would be unwise to gainsay. He might be a vassal of Rome but he was, in truth, too mighty a warrior to pay any attention to strictures from his nominal suzerain; he was more likely, if rebuffed, to send his lances raiding into the Papal States and, if angered enough, he might appear at the gates of the Holy City itself.
‘It is for you to decide, Your Holiness.’
Hildebrand gave Pope Victor a direct look that implied, in no uncertain terms, he wanted no part of such a judgement. A look at the Abbot of Monte Cassino produced no enlightenment either; if the poor pontiff had been uncomfortable discussing Ascletin and his manoeuvres, he had changed the subject to one which was even more troubling. Truly, he was thinking, being pope was nothing but a sea of troubles.
Nothing blighted the papacy as much as the fact that a man coming to the office of pontiff was rarely in the first flush of youth, in a world where death was relentless in the way it stalked mankind. Reform of the kind Hildebrand favoured had been proposed before and it was not always a combination of political forces that stymied it. Just as often it was mortality, a fact which kept alive the hopes of the powerful Roman families: they might be out of power but God — or was it the Devil? — had a way of altering matters to their advantage.
Pope Victor was ill, something he had managed to hide from his two closest advisors, a lingering sickness of the kind that allowed him to carry out the functions of his office if not too taxed. One of the acts he continually put off was to write the papal bull granting the Guiscard his annulment. It would never do for a pope to be seen to be indulging in haste: if God was eternal so was the pace of pontifical decision-making. In keeping his infirmity a secret he sought only to make life easy for himself: that he created more trouble for those he held in high esteem was inadvertent. He died while the most powerful members of the Curia who supported him, Hildebrand included, were out of Rome.
Well versed in the intricacies of Roman politics, Ascletin, newly returned from Bamberg, moved quickly, making alliances where none had previously existed by promising to share the spoils of his office with those families who might oppose him. They, knowing speed was of the essence and unable to impose their own candidate — matters had to be concluded before the likes of Hildebrand appeared back on the Vatican Hill — agreed to his elevation: within days of Victor’s death, Ascletin was proclaimed as Pope Benedict the Tenth.
Those who had voted against the new pope hurriedly left Rome, for if Ascletin was a bonehead he was popular with the mob he bribed with low-value coinage, meaning their persons were not safe. They travelled north to meet Hildebrand and their gathering was grim; in times past the only hope of redress was an appeal to the Holy Roman Emperor. That the present incumbent was a child mattered less than the power of the office.
Yet that was unpalatable for the very simple reason it once more abrogated to the reigning emperor the right to confirm a pope or deny him his elevation; yet again the papacy was caught between the empire and the corrupt Roman families, and to side with one or the other was to set back the process of reform by decades. Hildebrand would have none of it: first they must elect a true pope, and then seek the means to depose the man they considered false.
With much ceremony the Bishop of Florence was elected as Nicholas the Second. To deal with the antipope there was one other force to whom they could appeal, and one the newly elected Ascletin was known to hate and was determined to crush — the Normans. If the assembled divines were fearful of the consequences of such an act, they were more fearful of Hildebrand, the man on whom Nicholas depended and who forced the measure through, finally persuaded that, if needs required it, he must sup with the Norman devil.
Abbot Desiderius was tasked to sound out Richard of Capua. He saw, as quickly as would any other Norman baron, yet another step in the long march towards legitimacy in this part of the world was being taken. He immediately marched north with three hundred of his best knights, forcing Ascletin to flee. Pursued to the walled town of Galeria, he was besieged there, able to watch from its battlements the nature of those he had wanted to destroy.
All the devastation came from these Normans: Richard was unrestrained in the way he let his knights ravage the countryside around Galeria- growing crops were burnt, as was the next season’s seed, vines and olive trees cut down, with any peasant who sought to stop this despoliation hanged from what trees were left standing. Yet Galeria resisted and beat off many attacks on its walls until starvation forced them to surrender. Ascletin was publicly unfrocked, then dragged back to Rome where he was shut away in the crypt of a church, never again to see the light of day.
If the mobs of Rome were sullen when Nicholas arrived to take up his duties, they were not stupid: they rarely saw Normans this far north in numbers but they knew their reputation, while the aristocrats of Rome were left in no doubt by Richard of Capua that if they acted against the new dispensation, they would pay with their own blood.
CHAPTER TWELVE