The fall of Cardinal Adam

The morning of the January 11, 1385 dawned with clear skies and a sharp chill in the air. Adam and the other cardinals were invited by Urban to a meeting[i] to be held in the public forum in the lower courtyard of the castle. The whole papal court gathered, cardinals, bishops and their retinues together with the various artisans and labourers. The meeting seemed innocuous enough, no doubt Urban had called the gathering to rally his followers and invite them to look for the divine intervention that to the Pope’s mind would surely come in due course. Perhaps he wanted to discuss the strategy for the siege and the tactics Urban to outwit Charles, even perhaps how to make the castle’s rations last more longer.

Before his audience had time to take in what was happening, Urban was ranting and raving. He called down curses on his cardinals and then he shouted for his guards. Before they had the chance to move Adam and his fellow conspirators were surrounded by soldiers and loaded with chains. Urban carried on upbraiding them, accusing them of treasons and crimes against God and more particularly against himself. The plot had been betrayed. The rest of the court looked on in stunned silence as the pope denounced them for the letters they had written to Charles and told them in no uncertain terms that he had seen the letters himself.

Adam’s coded letters to King Charles had fallen into the hands of Thomas Orsini, a fellow cardinal who had been on good terms with the plotters. Orsini, a Roman aristocrat, must have considered turning a blind eye to the plot; he was no great fan of the rather crude manners of the former Archbishop of Bari or of his increasingly erratic behaviour. But in the best tradition of the Orsini clan through the ages, he saw an eye for the main chance. Here was a perfect opportunity to gain favour. Orsini betrayed Adam and his colleagues for the favours of a Pope who was showing all the signs of dementia. Apart from Adam there were six others in on the conspiracy, the Cardinals of Venice and Genoa, Cardinal de Sangro and the Cardinal Archbishops of Corfu and Taranto, together with the Archbishop of Aquilea[ii]. What had really shocked Urban was that with the possible exception of the Cardinal of Taranto, these were the most senior and learned of the clerics left at court. Moreover, as they were also men that he had promoted himself, it represented the worst form of betrayal.

The raging pontiff ordered that the cardinals be taken in their chains and thrown into a broken cistern among the outbuildings of the courtyard[iii] until suitably uncomfortable and secure accommodation could be found for them. When Theoderic de Niem, one of Urban’s personal secretaries, returned to the castle a few hours later he saw the wretched men locked in small cells set into the walls of one of the towers, open at the front to the cold winter winds. The unfortunate cardinals looked for all the world like gargoyles. The cells were so small that the corpulent Cardinal di Sangro did not have room to sit down.

Torture!

Basilio de Genova took charge of the wretched conspirators. Basilio served Urban as his military commanders at Nocera. A former pirate and renowned soldier, he had remained faithful to Urban’s cause throughout the troublesome years that followed his coronation. Basilio made a deep impression on Theoderic de Niem, and it was not a good one! He described him as a malicious man who in his pirate days took pleasure in torturing Christians in general whilst retaining a particular loathing for clerics and other men of the cloth[iv]. Urban tried to give Basilio an aura of respectability by making him a Knight of the Hospitalers of St John. If Urban was now reduced to relying on the services of a former pirate and notorious anti-cleric, at least he had a task in mind that would allow the man to use his talents. Basilio relished the opportunity of obtaining appropriate confessions from his charges, and Urban made it clear that he might use whatever means he found suitable.

Later the same day the Bishop of Aquilea, the oldest and weakest of the six conspirators, was the first to be interrogated. Under the painful ministrations of the conscientious Knight, the aged bishop repeatedly passed out and had to be revived in order to appreciate the full effects of Basilio’s work. It was only the pride and pleasure that he took in his task that drove Basilio to carry on torturing the poor bishop long after he agreed to confess. Adam must have looked on in horror, knowing very well that each of the conspirators could expect the same treatment. Pinned into a cell in which he could barely move, he was exposed to the worst ravages of the freezing winds and driving rain. Even in Southern Italy January can be severely cold. As he watched the courtiers gathering round to see the old bishop being tortured, he must have cursed himself for the foolishness of the enterprise and faced the certainty of the long and painful death awaiting him. For the time being however, Urban satisfied himself with the confession that had been ground out of the bishop. He would let the cardinals endure the agony of anticipation.

Three days later, on the January 14, 1385[v], their waiting was over. It was another cold day, and in the open courtyard high above Nocera the wind felt particularly icy[vi]. Urban invited Basilio to torture the remaining cardinals. In this gruesome task he was aided and abetted by Francisco Prignano, the pope’s loathsome nephew for whose benefit the whole Neapolitan expedition had been undertaken in the first place. A number of torments had been prepared for the benefit of each cardinal, and a rack and corda were set up in the lower courtyard. The latter was a rather ingenious device involving a high frame rigged with ropes and pulleys. The victim was roped up to a pulley and then a weight was attached to his feet. A counter-weight was put on the other side of the pulley, ripping the victim’s limbs in opposite directions. If the arms were not ripped from their sockets, the unfortunate was eventually drawn, painfully, to the top of the frame. Then the counter weight was released causing him to plummet to the ground, smashing his legs against the stone paving of the courtyard .

Basilio organised the torture so that each man would take his turn at each instrument and their agony would be on full display to those who had to follow. The cardinals were ordered to remove their cloaks so they should be fully exposed to the cold. Urban’s soldiers drew lots for possession of the rich clothes. Adam was the fourth to succumb to the venal pleasures of Francisco and Basilio. He watched the distress of first the Cardinal di Sangro, then the Cardinals of Venice and Corfu as each in turn suffered agonies under the close attentions of their torturers. Finally Adam had his turn, and when the poor man’s body had been cruelly wrecked, he joined the others in an iron cage suspended from the ceiling of a damp vault at the foot of the Torre di Filangieri. Whatever he thought as he watched the agonies of the others, he remained true to his religion throughout his ordeal. He may have indulged in excesses in his life as a monk, and he had certainly taken a pretty liberal view of the Rule of Benedict, but he did not lose his faith. Five years later he related how in the hours of despair in Nocera, he prayed to Brigit, the mystic who he had met in Montefiascone and whose sainthood he had championed before his fall from grace. She was a natural source of comfort for Adam. A saintly woman whom he had met and would therefore be, to the mind of a 14th Century cleric, ideally placed to intercede with God on his behalf. In a world where relics of the true Cross and belief in the intervention of saints who had died centuries ago were a commonplace, it is logical that Adam should choose to follow his faith in such a direct way. He did not look to the Blessed Virgin or the patron of his old priory, St Leonard, but someone he actually knew. Someone who at a practical level  would be able to intercede with God on his behalf, who might be in a position to understand his good points and his true worth. It is an odd mixture of pure faith and rationality. For the time being at any rate, Brigit kept him from death if not from the misery of captivity in Nocera.