The method to try to assassinate him was quite common in that final period of the Middle Ages, but they failed because the natural antidote to arsenic is sugar, and because the pontiff's personal physician, Gerónimo de Santa Fe, knew how to apply good emergency solutions. It happened in 1418.
"He was a tough, brilliant, stubborn, inexhaustible man, with a dry face, who faced the most powerful institution of the Middle Ages "
Pablo González, an expert in the history of Peñíscola, tells it. Five years later he died, attention, at the age of 95, in this beautiful city of the old Kingdom of Valencia, close to Catalonia. He was a rebellious, stubborn, inexhaustible, cultured, brilliant man, with a strong character and a dry gesture, who faced the Catholic Church until he was excommunicated and condemned by Rome at the Council of Constance (1413); and that put the European monarchies in check.
An uncomfortable guy with the life of a novel, like the one that Vicente Blasco Ibáñez dedicated to him in El Papa y el mar, or Jesús Maeso de la Torre in El Papa Luna. Benedictus XIII and the Schism of the West , and that would have fit perfectly as the protagonist in a television series such as Game of Thrones .
Jesús de Maeso says of him, in an interview published when he edited his book, that “he was an incorruptible man, of impeccable moral cleanliness. He was chaste, sober, austere ... He slept on a pine bed, he ate from tin plates ... ”. And he adds that "it was the antithesis of the clergy of the time, in which simony (purchase or sale of sacraments, perks and ecclesiastical benefits), lewdness, greed for riches abounded ... The great ecclesiastics lived in sumptuous palaces".
It is worth pausing in the novel that the Valencian Blasco Ibáñez wrote about Pope Luna , who was by the way a deeply anticlerical and republican writer and agitator. In it, the author of La barraca traces the profile of a character who wanted, above all, a Church closer to the people and who, at the same time, loved culture and the politics of consensus. It is in Peñíscola, from a room where he could see the sea, where this formidable character wrote his main work, The Book of the Consolations of Human Life.
The most surprising thing about Pope Luna is observing how he knew how to move skillfully in one of the most turbulent periods of the Catholic Church in its history, in what is known as the Great Schism of the West (1378-1417). A period in which the division of the institution, with headquarters in Avignon and Rome, caused that at a certain moment there were three popes at the same time. With the French monarchy questioning the power of Rome and generating the breeding ground for reformist movements that over time, already in the Renaissance, would feed Lutheranism and Calvinism.
A time (the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth) of wars, of Reconquest, of urban disturbances, of the end of feudalism, of the rise of the cities and that came out of serious pandemics such as the fearsome Black Death that killed one in three Europeans .
Benedict XIII is the fruit of that time, and he knew as few how to live within it. A native of Illueca, this Aragonese was born in 1328 into a prestigious family of the Crown of Aragon, with illustrious figures in all the fundamental fields of that time: nobility, clergy and army. In fact, Pedro de Luna was also a military man; a tough guy, historians say, brave, who laid down the weapons to join the Church, which was quite common. But the institution that Pope Luna knew was cracking due to the latent conflict between Church and State with Philip IV the Fair , King of France, and Pope Boniface VIII , as protagonists.
"He tried to pacify the Great Schism, but
ended up being the protagonist of a
Catholic crisis that lasted 40 years"
The move was won by the monarch: he arrested the Pope in the Italian town of Anagni, an attitude that was also very common at that moment in history where politics was resolved with the blow of the sword. Boniface VIII died soon after, and the king imposed a French pope, Clement V. This moved the Holy See from Rome to Avignon. Thus, the papacy came from that moment under the orbit of the kingdom of France. It was the first step for the serious crisis that would come some time later and that would come with Pope Gregory X. This pontiff, although he was French, decided that it was time to return to Rome.
After dying, shortly after, his possible successors, the cardinals, took sides according to their convenience. The Italian faction, pressured by the Roman people, revolted and furious, made Urban VI pope. But the conclave that elected him lacked the Avignon cardinals, who declared their election void. That is when Pedro de Luna, a cardinal, a protégé of the Crown of Aragon appears, who came as a mediator and ended up joining the rebel side.
Shortly after, a cousin of the King of France was appointed High Pontiff, who was proclaimed Clement VII and settled in Avignon. The Church had two popes and the schism, which would last for forty years, was consolidated. Both venues, the Italian and the French, rushed in search of support. Clemente VII entrusted this delicate mission to Pedro Martínez de Luna. The cardinal won the support of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Naples, southern Germany, Scotland, and, of course, France. The rest of the countries favored the Roman Urban VI.
Pedro de Luna, in a gesture of conciliation, believed it appropriate to unite Catholicism through the abdication of the two disputed popes and the appointment of a third, but his project was rejected by Clement VII. Upon his death, Luna was elected pope under the name of Benedict XIII with the promise of ending the Great Schism. However, once in the Avignon papal chair, he rejected the ideas he had defended shortly before. And a new phase of crisis began in the institution.
"He was excommunicated, persecuted and
they tried to assassinate him by order of
Pope Martin V, but they were unsuccessful"
Pedro de Luna did not give up, and made the phrase of "staying in his thirteen; famous in reference to his name as pontiff, Benedict XIII. He returned to his homeland to secure his support from the Crown of Aragon. Benedict XIII expected the support of the King of Aragon and of his most intimate friendship and personal confessor, San Vicente Ferrer, at that crucial moment, when it even seemed that the Schism could be resolved in his favor. But it was not like that, and Benedict XIII saw the omelette turn.
"He was the only pontiff elected pope by cardinals prior to the Western Schism"; Jesus de Maeso pointed out, and from that legitimacy he maintained the pulse. In Rome, a new pope, Gregory XII, of a moderate and pacifying character, assumed power with the intention of ending the bicephaly of Christendom. It was then that the so-called summit of Pisa took place, in which a new pope,
Alexander V., was invested. The other two pontiffs refused to resign, so that after this Council there were not two, but three simultaneous popes. Meanwhile, the Pisan hierarchy had a new holy father, John XXIII , (actually an antipope) who had replaced the late Alexander V. John XXIII, with the approval of Sigismund, sovereign of the Holy Empire, summoned a synod to be held in Constance. , Germany, to close the Great Schism once and for all.
There Juan XXIII was delegitimized; Gregory XII, the Roman, resigned through a representative; but Pope Luna refused to abdicate and retired to Peñíscola, in Castellón. Constanza put an end to the Schism of the West, and the Aragonese took refuge with her most faithful, and dedicated the rest of her days to vindicate himself, to read and write, and to modernize the town of Castellón.
"He founded the University of Saint Andrews, the most prestigious in Scotland, and dedicated his last years to writing"
Also from Peñíscola he founded the University of Saint Andrews , the first and most prestigious university in Scotland. And one of the last strongholds of fidelity to Pope Luna in the world. At 95 he died, and Rome was rid of one of the most uncomfortable characters of that time. He was so stubborn that, as an example, at the Council of Perpignan, promoted by the King of Aragon (late 1408, early 1409) that Pope Luna defended his legitimacy for more than 7 hours uninterrupted in perfect Latin.
In the interview about his book Jesús Maeso de la Torre said that “Papa Luna was an absolutely contradictory man. He was not a stubborn person, but made a virtue of his firmness. He kept the colossal machine of the Vatican in check. He was an admirable and unique character”. For a time, Rome did not want more cardinals from the Crown of Aragon who could become popes.
But decades later, other characters would arrive at the Vatican who would end up becoming a nightmare for the powers of Renaissance Europe; smart and ambitious, with a vision of politics that would last for centuries; they were the Borja, a Valencian saga that would have two popes, Calixto III and Alejandro VI , with a family of mythical characters such as César or Lucrecia. But that is another story.
"In Peñíscola, the city that welcomed him, helped to modernize the city when Europe was at the gates of the Renaissance".
The rehabilitation of Pope Luna
