A Trembling Upon Rome

Historical Note

The Council of Konstanz, which ended in 1418 after three years and six months of existence, also ended the great schism in the Church which had lasted for thirty-nine years, and terminated the 112 year period when popes ruled from France.

Cardinal Deacon Oddone Colonna was elected as the single Pope of Christendom on 11 November 1417, at Konstanz, taking the name of Martin V.

Baldassare Cossa was held prisoner at the castle of Heidelberg from 1415 until 1418, when Cosimo di Medici took up the matter of his release with Pope Martin. For payment of 38,500 Rhenish gulden made by Bartholomeus de Bardis, the Medici bank representative – presumably advanced against Cossas promissory note – the former pope was released by his jailer, Count Palatine.

While Pope Martin was officiating in the cathedral at Florence on 18 June 1419, Baldassare. Cossa appeared before him. Cossa threw himself at Martin's feet, acknowledging him as the only true and canonically elected pope.

On 23 June 1419, Pope Martin bestowed on Cossa the bishopric of Frascati, and on the following Tuesday raised him once more to the sacred college as Cardinal Tusculanus, with all of the benefices, incomes and emoluments due to a prince of the Church.

Cossa lived out his remaining days with his faithful friend and banker Cosimo di Medici, in the Medici house in the Via dei Buoni. He died on 22 December 1419. He was fifty-two years old. Cosimo di Medici commissioned a tomb for Cossa, which was designed, by Donatello and fashioned by Michelozzo. It rests to this day in Florence, on the right-hand side of the high altar of the baptistery, the most ancient church in the city, which replaced the Temple of Mars. The bronze figure of Cossa, recumbent on one side, looks out over the Florentine children who are brought there to be baptized.

Franco Ellera lived on in Florence, Bologna and, Rome after Cossa's death. He died in Florence, in Cosimo di Medici's garden, in 1424, surviving his wife, Bernaba, by four years.

Cosimo di Medici died some years later in Florence, the host to the Italian Renaissance. At the urging of his mistress, Maria Giovanna Toreton, he sent two consecutive expeditions to North Africa, Turkey and the Middle East to search for the Marchesa di Artegiana – to no avail. Maria Giovanna Toreton was the last survivor of the group which had secured the Church's banking for the Medici. She died in 1464, at the age of eighty.

No reform of the Church had been attempted by the Council of Konstanz.