The estate of a pope has no peer: an emperor follows him and a king is correspondent; a high cardinal next in dignity: then a king's son, an archbishop his equal; a duke of the blood royal; a bishop, a marquis and earl co-equal; then a viscount, legate, baron, suffragan and mitred abbot; down through doctor of divinity and protonotary to master of chancery, parson, vicar and yeoman of the crown; to worshipful merchants and rich artificers, gentlemen well nurtured and with good manners.

But, a pope is supreme. The Apostles said, 'Behold here are two swords, and the God of Christendom replied that this was enough but not too many. He who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of peter wrongly interprets the word of the Lord when He says, `Put up thy sword in its scabbard.' Both swords, the spiritual and the material, are in the power of the Church; the one, indeed, must be wielded for the Church, the other by the Church; the one by the hand of the pope, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the pope. The ecclesiastical power is verified by the prophecy of a Jew, Jeremiah, who said, `See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms – and the other things which follow. Therefore, if the earthly power err, it shall be judged by the spiritual power; if the lesser spiritual power err, then it shall be judged by the greater, a pope. A spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one, Every human creature is subject to a pope.

That is how the Christians were all taught that it should be. But that is not how the mockery of time saw it happen.

Baldassare Cossa, my master, a great condottiere, the eldest son of the feared pirate family of Procida, creator of the papacy of Alexander V, friend of kings and Cosimo di Medici, the scourge of Ladislas and thus the saviour of Italy, the shatterer of the great schism of the Church, the beloved of countless women and ruler of Christendom which is the world of men, became Pope John XXIII.