The extreme measures of the Council were fatal to its unity. It was felt that many of the decrees were inspired by French and German antipathy to Italian preponderance in the Church. At the same time the numerical [Sidenote: Divisions in the Council.] majority of the lower clergy was regarded with growing mistrust by the bishops and other dignitaries. Reforms might begin with the Papacy, but were not likely to stop there. Cesarini and other moderate men, who had supported the Council as long as the Bohemian negotiations were at a critical stage, were now inclined to rally to the cause of the Pope. This growing papal party found an active and unscrupulous leader in the Bishop of Taranto, whose aim was to bring about an irreconcilable quarrel between the Pope and the Council. On the other side, the reforming and anti-Italian party was headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Arles, a prelate of unquestioned piety and learning, but a resolute antagonist of the Papacy and perhaps a personal enemy of Eugenius IV. On the same side was a man destined to play an important part in the history of the Council and of Christendom, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini. He was a native of Siena who had come to Basel in the suite of the Bishop of Fermo, and had since acted as secretary to various prelates. He had made a name for himself by his oratorical powers, the purity of his Latin style, and his diplomatic ability. He had attached himself to the reforming party, but no one suspected him of having any firm convictions, and those who knew his easy and pleasure-loving nature can have had little expectation that he would one day rise to the headship of the Church. Between the two extreme parties at the Council was a moderate section, headed by a Spaniard, John of Segovia, but it was neither numerous nor important.