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The Cardinal of MantuaCaruso della Spada Lucani is the cardinal for north Vodacce. He has radical ideas, which delayed his election to cardinal. Some of his thinking borders on heretical, and he's a vocal proponent of returning the headquarters of the church to Numa, so it's no surprise that he and Cardinal Esteban Verdugo are not friends.
Nine Archbishops of Mantua
Nine archbishops serve under Cardinal della Spada Lucani, three each in Mondavi, Caligari, and Vestini lands. Zanebono Mondashi, Luigi Pioci and Rinaldo della Mantua are the three Mondavi archbishops.
Archbishop Zanebono Mondashi was honored with a name from Prince Alcide Mondavi not long after the prince's ascension twenty years ago, back when he was only a local bishop. This mark of approval handily won him the northern archbishopric containing Profeta Chiesa and Monfalcone. While the two men are not always in perfect agreement, in general the prince declines to meddle in the northern church and the archbishop keeps an eye on the prince's interests. Three things trouble Mondashi: the relationship between the Bishop of Profeta Chiesa and Princess Nemise du Arrent Mondavi, the influx of Objectionist Eisen across the border, and his future prospects. The very favor that elevated him to archbishop may prevent him from ever rising further, as the other archbishoprics in Mantua will be unlikely to elect an obvious Mondavi partisan to the Hieros Council.
Archbishop Luigi Pioci oversees central Mondavi, including Agitazione, the largest city in mainland Mondavi. Much trade flows through the archbishopric, and generally higher wealth means generally higher tithes. Pioci does well for himself. Further, Agitazione is itself on the main overland route between Numa and Castille, so church delgations going from Numa to Vaticine City or visa versa pass through regularly. The archbishop has positioned himself to be a dependable intermediary, familiar with men on either end of the route and able to make connections. While the headquarters of the archbishopric are in Agitazione, Pioci has declined to involve himself in the troubles that plague its bishop - that, he says, would be meddling in the bishop's authority.
Archbishop Rinaldo della Mantua oversees southern Mondavi. South Mondavi, close to Villanova lands, is swampier and more rural than even the rest of Mondavi. Archbishop Rinaldo is a local, born and bred, elected to his position by men who knew him since he was a boy planting rice and hunting spiders. Most of them had once been such boys as well, or else the fourth sons of backcountry lords. Rinaldo is a good shepherd to his rustic flock, which has few of the complicated political problems the most influential and cosmopolitan areas do. On the other hand, the Villanova wolves are just to the south - but the shepherd has shown himself handy with his staff.
Each archbishop in Mondavi is served by ten bishops; each bishop oversees approximately 100 parishes. The largest and most prestigious bishoprics are usually the urban ones, especially Profeta Chiesa and Agitazione. Most bishops are in their fifties and up. A good record of service helps in an honest election, so time is needed to build a solid reputation as a good priest and a competent manager. Most priests start out as an assistant pastor at a large church or a pastor of a small one in their early twenties, and may be promoted to a position of more authority by their early thirties. After proving themselves in that capacity, they are candidates for bishop.
Bishop Davide Salberini lives quite regally in Profeta Chiesa.
Profeta Chiesa is where the mainland governor is
supposed to live, but Marchese Gallisus Mondavi likes the go to
the islands instead; his Montaigne wife Nemise du Arrent Mondavi is trying to
run things in his absence, forging his signature to
things with his permission. She's doing all right, but she's a foreigner and a woman and only about 20, and despite the forgeries, most of the area knows that Gallisus isn't on the mainland and she is. The bishop's support for her is critical and they both
know it. It's well-known that Nemise hates her husband and his courtesan; rumors about her and the bishop as lovers run rampant.
They're split about half and half between a mutual
love affair and the bishop using his influence
unfairly over her. Gallisus has either
failed to hear the rumors or has dismissed them out of
hand as sheer imagination, since he hasn't dueled the
bishop yet.
The bishop of Agitazione, Sandro Valli, is a younger man and is struggling somewhat with his responsibilites. Tigran Mondavi makes his home here, being the official steward of the Lorenzo Palace. While Don Tigran has little official political power, when he's in town the local rulers just let him have his way. The bishop is happiest when Tigran is elsewhere! (He attained his post at such a young age primarily because the older and more experienced priests didn't want it.) Being an old city with a big old Lorenzo palace in it, Agitazione is also considered a little haunted (not so badly as
Vestini lands) and the Church has to try and fight that superstition as well. It hasn't worked these past 600 years, but they keep at it. The city has its share of urban crime, and the bishop hopes to mitigate its effects on the poor. Also, the reconstruction of Lorenzo Palace has attracted large numbers of migrant Objectionist Eisen workers from Sieger; keeping their heresy from contaminating the locals is another strong goal.
Monfalcone is a fair-sized city with an active industry (paper-making and printing), so its bishop Valentino Giordani should be included on this list. Giordani is over seventy and lives an active, secular life, with a lot of hunting, feasting, dancing, and romancing. He's good-hearted enough, but not very pious. Father Angelo Donati is widely considered to be his probable successor. Father Giulia Masacci is the only other priest in the bishopric with a reputation approaching Donati's, but her sex makes her election extremely unlikely.
West of Monfalcone, between it and Profeta Chiesa, lies a string of small river ports, modest rice farms, and fishing villages. The two cities are close enough together that trade either overland or by river can easily make the journey from one city to the other in a day, so these hamlets are usually bypassed by all the traffic and the money that might come from serving the travelers. This is Bishop Gianfranco Fini's demense. Bishop Fini's main problem these days, like most of the northern Mondavi bishops, is refugee Eisen. If they'd come to buy, they'd be welcome. But his area is already depressed, and more impoverished people eager for work and food aren't improving things. He's also noted that these "young men who will send for their families later" are suspiciously organized for refugees. Locally focused, Fini only suspects that one of the local lords is gathering mercenaries to intimidate or overtake a rival; he's trying to discretely uncover which one is preparing to attack which other one. He's not sure what he'll do when he finds that out; depending on who is involved, he might expose the whole thing in an attempt to prevent a battle (and in the planting season!) or else, if he doesn't dare interfere, just quietly gather aid to send to the region that will be affected by the fighting.
North of Monfalcone, across the Trade River, Bishop Conrad Hirsch administers the Vaticine parishes in Eisenfausts Sieger and Hainzl's koingriechs. Since South Eisen is primarily Objectionist, Hirsch oversees a large area, even though he has no more parishes under him than any other bishop. He is old and lived through the War of the Cross. The experience was hard on him. While he conscientiously performs his duties (soliciting and distributing alms for starving Sieger and trying to blunt the effects of Herr Hainzl's madness on his people), he does them out of habit rather than out of love. While the war didn't break his heart, its ending did: the Vaticine Church in Castille did not prevent the Castillian king from tearing at Eisen's corpse in the Treaty of the Weissbergs. They didn't even try, despite Hirsch's letters and entreaties.
To Monfalcone's east, Bishop Aldo la Malfa appears to be shepherding his people through a near-crisis brought about by the Eisen refugees. The destitution across the river in Sieger has seen incidents of robbery and banditry increase all around, but to hear la Malfa tell it, the rich fields and poor peasants of his mainly agricultural bishopric have been especially targeted. He's a fiery preacher, championing the cause of landlords and tenant farmers alike against the Eisen horde, deploring the lack of martial response to the problem. And the heresy! Bishop la Malfa has stopped short of calling for the Inquisition's help with the Objectionists, but his rousing sermons may one day result in outbreaks of sectarian violence. Local speculation is that la Malfa's bishopric is no more hard-hit than any other, and that he's just inflating things to give himself a crisis to mitigate, to improve his reputation. Further away, other clerics seem to take la Malfa at his word and are duly impressed at his handling of the situation.
Bishop Mario Baldassari controls the parishes south of Monfalcone. He was elected just three years ago, at age forty-five, and is just now settling more comfortably into his role. His response to the "Eisen invasion" is a sudden spike in funding for church-sponsored schools. The best way to fight heresy, he figures, is to educate the local populace in the Truth. Once they know the Truth, lies will not tempt them. He's also investigating other less-traditional avenues of educating the populace, including Cardinal della Spada Lucani's idea that maybe translating the Vigils of the Prophets into the Vodacce tongue isn't so heretical after all. (Rest assured that Baldassari will consult extensively with church scholars before undertaking such a daring move.)
Cardinal Michel Durand del Falisci has jurisdiction over the islands. This includes Mondavi Island, of course. This arrangement is no accident; whenever a Prince wants to treat with the Church in his lands, he needs to address two cardinals instead of one. While this has often been beneficial for the Church, canny Princes sometimes manage to play one cardinal against the other, to the Church's detriment.
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