Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/541

 The Popes and the Councils 505 at any other place. Then the king wrote incontinent to his brother, the duke of Anjou, who was at Toulouse, signifying him that after he had received his letter he should go to Avignon to the pope and break his voyage to Rome, if it were possible. The duke did as the king commanded him, and so came to Avignon, where the cardinals received him with great joy, and so he was lodged in the pope's palace, the ofter thereby to speak with the pope. Ye may know well that he spoke with the pope and How the showed him divers reasons to have broken his purpose ; kin s of but the pope would in no wise consent thereto nor take SOU ght to any heed of any business on this side of the mountains, dissuade the . . . When the duke saw that he could not come to his pope ' intent for no reason nor fair words that he could show, he took leave of the pope, and said at his parting, " Holy father, ye go into a country among such people where ye be but little beloved, and ye will leave the fountain of faith and the realm where holy Church hath most faith and excellence of all the world. And, sir, by your deed the Church may fall into great tribulation. For if ye die there, the which is right likely, and so say the physicians, then the Romans, who be malicious and traitors, shall be lords and masters of all the cardinals and shall make a pope at their own will." Howbeit, for all these words and many others, the pope never rested till he was on his way. . . . The Romans were right joyful of his coming, and all the chief men of Rome mounted on their horses and so brought him into Rome with great triumph and lodged him in St. Peter's palace. And ofttimes he visited a church called Our Lady the Great [Santa Maria Maggiore] within Rome, wherein he had great pleasure and did make therein many costly works. And within a while after his coming to Rome he died and was buried in the said church, and there his obsequy was made, as to a pope appertained. 1 1 Here Froissart inserts a fabulous story of the election of a pope one hundred years of age, who straightway died, worn out by the cele- bration which the enthusiastic Romans prepared in his honor. His account of the election of Urban VI and Clement VII, given below, is,