Although Boniface was one of the most successful popes ever to fill the chair of St Peter (from an: executive standpoint, for he took an enfeebled Church and remade it into a magnificent piece of machinery his success required much: money to reach fruition – more money by half than the Church had. For there was another. pope, Clement VII, commanding separate allegiances at Avignon, exacting his dues and tithes (and more) from his part of the obedience of Christendom. The deep schismatic wound of the Church had a mournful history. The popes had been in France for eighty-four years, but the actual schism which had produced two popes simultaneously had begun with Urban VI, Bonifaces' immediate predecessor.

I am not an ignorant man, as you have seen plainly since the beginning of this narrative. One would have immediately supposed that Cossa was highly educated and that I was untrained. But I educated myself. I used books. I studied Cossa's books and I insisted on being the only one to drill him in his studies because; had I not educated myself, he would have outgrown me and even the small influence such as I had with him would have been greatly diminished. But, further than the fact that I knew the law without being privy to its honours, I was better educated than Cossa because the only history he cared about was military history and whatever Church history was required to get his diploma.

I devoured history. Everything about history depended on money. It was the money which made the history; so I tried hard to understand money while not expecting to get any of it. Cossa, having so much of it, never had to study money. He took it for granted and, no matter how much he had, he always needed more.

If there is anybody within 5000 miles of where I am writing this who hasn't heard about the schism in the only Church they'll ever have, I don't believe it. But maybe if I wrap this manuscript well and hide it

in a good place, somebody will read this story a hundred years iron now and maybe they won't remember what started the whole schism which spilt their Church in half and was also very bad for business.

This is how the schism happened and how the papacy was moved from Rome to France.

In 1292, when Nicholas IV passed into God's fullest grace, there was a deadlock in the sacred college for twenty-seven months before his successor could be elected, and even then it happened by a cruel trick. There were only nine cardinals left in that college and only three of those were independent, the others were either Orsini or Colonna. Pope Nicholas had been an Orsini. The Orsini would not accept the loss of the papacy but the Colonna were determined to take it away from them, and you may be sure that the three remaining cardinals were unwilling to offend either family, both of whom had wilfully scattered murder throughout the streets of Rome.

The cardinals disputed who should be elected pope until the plague came to Rome, and they withdrew to the mountains of Perugia, still deadlocked.

One of the neutrals – a cardinal who was neither an Orsini nor a Colonna – was Cardinal Gaetani; the greatest canon lawyer of his time. He was a cold, pinguescent man whose height was such that he could tower over everyone (except me, had I been there). He carried his weight as daintily as a hippopotamus; he had eyes like knives, the determination of an assassin, and delicate hands.

To break the deadlock in his own devious way, Gaetani told Latino Malabranca, Cardinal of Ostia – therefore the senior cardinal that he had received a `letter of fire' from a holy hermit, Peter of Morone, which prophesied the vengeance of God upon all of them if a pope were not soon elected.

This was July 1294. Malabranca was a very religious fellow. He took the forgery which Gaetani had handed him with devout seriousness. He prayed. He contemplated. Then, on 5 July, he summoned the handful of cardinals, read them the letter which he believed had come from the holy hermit; demanding a vote instantly, he was so carried away by his own visions that he cried out, `In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I elect brother Peter of Morone.' The deadlock was broken by the logic of demonstrating to Colonna and Orsini alike that neither of them needed to prevent the other from winning.

Not that the cardinals of either family bothered to make the journey to Abruzzi to meet the new pope, to kiss his feet as ever tradition of the sacred college required. But, it, being only the villain of every piece who is certain of what he wants, Cardinal Gaetani did go to Abruzzi to pay his homage. With him were the King of Naples and an enormous following of ordinary people. In a bleak cave in the Abruzzi mountains, Gaetani told the holy hermit that he had been made Vicar of Christ on earth. The confused frightened old man, who had never seen so many people in his life, nodded to the statement because Gaetani had bellowed at him from that great height, in those rich and beautiful scarlet robes covering that barrel' chest and hogshead belly, commanding that Peter now nod his head to signify his acceptance of God's glory. Emaciated, hardly understanding Latin, much less the condition, Peter accepted the rulership of Christendom filled with mortal terror because he would have to leave his cave. He refused to go to Rome. He would rule from Naples. At Gaetani's, suggestion, he chose the name Celestine V. From that day forward, Gaetani served the pope as his lawyer and soothed him by creating a replica of the hermit's mountain cell in the Castel Nuovo, which had become the Lateran palace of Naples.

Celestine belonged to an order called the Spiritualists, who now brought terrible pressure upon him to bring pure love to the world. Gaetani saw to it that the tough, cynical bureaucrats of the curia jockeyed around the new pope.

Gaetani's consideration in duplicating, Celestine's cold, wet mountain cave within the Castel Nuovo was a hidden speaking tube which he had installed in the ceiling of the cell. Deep in the night, while Celestine prayed for divine guidance, Gaetani sat at the working end of the tube and, in the sepulchral tones which soared out of that great belly, warned his pope to abdicate the throne or face the flames of hell. After suffering the agonies of several nights of this, the poor old man turned to his eminent lawyer. Gaetani, lot advice on how such an abdication could be arranged. Piously Gaetani piloted his client's request through dangerous legal shoals.

The news leaked out. There was an uproar. Along with his consuming fear that if he didn't get out before he died he would be damned to an eternity in hell, Celestine had to cope with the ferocities of his fellow Spiritualist monks, who knew the abdication would prevent the long-awaited reign of eternal love and take away from them their new privileges. They stirred up the populace of Naples until the king afraid that the capital of Christendom would leave Naples as a result of the abdication, battered upon the old man to change his mind.

Celestine pretended to reconsider, while Gaetani's legal machinery ground on, but fifteen weeks after his coronation the miserable, addled old man summoned his last consistory and read out the prepared deed of renunciation to his cardinals. Slowly, to favour his old legs, he descended from the throne and stripped himself of his imprisoning robes.

Gaetani was elected to the papacy ten days later, as the compromise candidate, taking the name of Boniface VIII. His first act as pope was to order the arrest of Celestine, whom he sentenced to death.

Boniface VIII was consecrated and crowned at St Peter's in Rome. He witnessed the archdeacon throw the scarlet robe over him, confer his papal name and declare, `I invest you with the Roman Church.' Boniface was seated upon the sedes stercoraria, a true night commode, so that all would see that their pope was demonstrating I Kings 2.8: `He raiseth up the poor out of the dust and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill to set them among princes:'