My heart racked by a thousand anxieties after the scene of the night, I woke on the morning of the fifth day when prime was already ringing, as William shook me roughly, warning me that the two legations would be meeting shortly. I looked out of the cell window and saw nothing. The fog of the previous day was now a milky blanket that totally covered the high plain.
When I went outside, I saw the abbey as I had never seen it before. A few of the major buildings — the church, the Aedificium,, the chapter house — could be discerned even at a distance, though still vague, shadows among shadows, while the rest of the constructions were visible only at a few paces. Shapes, of things and animals, seemed to rise suddenly from the void; people materialized from the mist, first gray, like ghosts, then gradually though not easily recognizable.
Born in a northern clime, I was not unfamiliar with that element, which at another moment would have pleasantly reminded me of the plains and the castle of my birth. But that morning the condition of the air seemed painfully kin to the condition of my soul, and the sadness with which I had awakened increased as I slowly approached the chapter house.
A few feet from the building, I saw Bernard Gui taking his leave of another person, whom I did not immediately recognize. Then, as he passed me, I realized it was Malachi. He looked around like a man not wishing to be seen while committing some crime.
He did not recognize me and went off. Impelled by curiosity, I followed Bernard and saw that he was glancing through some papers, which perhaps Malachi had delivered to him. At the door of the chapter house, with a gesture, he summoned the captain of the archers, standing nearby, and murmured a few words to him. Then he went in. I followed him still.
It was the first time I had set foot in that place. On the outside it was of modest dimensions and sober design; I realized that it had recently been rebuilt over the remains of a primitive abbatial church, perhaps partly destroyed by fire.
Entering from the outside, you passed beneath a portal in the new fashion, with a pointed arch and no decorations, surmounted by a rose window. But inside you found yourself in a vestibule, built on the traces of an old narthex. Facing you was another doorway, its arch in the old style, and with a half-moon tympanum wondrously carved. It must have been the doorway of the now vanished church.
The sculptures of the tympanum were equally beautiful but not so disturbing as those of the newer church. Here again, the tympanum was dominated by an enthroned Christ; but at his sides, in various poses and with various objects in their hands, were the twelve apostles, who had received from him the mission to go forth and preach among all peoples. Over Christ’s head, in an arc divided into twelve panels, and under Christ’s feet, in an unbroken procession of figures, the peoples of the world were portrayed, destined to receive the Word. From their dress I could recognize the Hebrews, the Cappadocians, the Arabs, the Indians, the Phrygians, the Byzantines, the Armenians, the Scythians, the Romans. But, along with them, in thirty round frames that made an arc above the arc of twelve panels, were the inhabitants of the unknown worlds, of whom only the Physiologus and the vague reports of travelers speak slightly. Many of them were unfamiliar to me, others I identified. For example, brutes with six fingers on each hand; fauns born from the worms that develop between the bark and the pulp of trees; sirens with scaly tails who seduce seamen; Ethiops, their bodies all black, defending themselves against the fire of the sun by digging underground caverns; ass-centaurs, men to the navel and asses below; Cyclopes, each with a single eye the size of a shield; Scylla, with a girl’s head and bosom, a she-wolf’s belly, and a dolphin’s tail; the hairy men of India, who live in swamps and on the river Epigmarides; the cynocephali, who cannot say a word without barking; sciopods, who run swiftly on their single leg and when they want to take shelter from the sun stretch out and hold up their great foot like an umbrella; astomats from Greece, who have no mouth but breathe through their nostrils and live only on air; bearded women of Armenia; Pygmies; blemmyae, born headless, with mouths in their bellies and eyes on their shoulders; the monster women of the Red Sea, twelve feet tall, with hair to the ankles, a cow’s tail at the base of the spine, and camel’s hoofs; and those whose soles are reversed, so that, following them by their footprints, one arrives always at the place whence they came and never where they are going; and men with three heads, others with eyes that gleam like lamps, and monsters of the island of Circe, human bodies with heads of the most diverse animals …
These and other wonders were carved on that doorway. But none of them caused uneasiness because they did not signify the evils of this earth or the torments of hell but, rather, bore witness that the Word had reached all the known world and was extending to the unknown; thus the doorway was a joyous promise of concord, of unity achieved in the word of Christ, splendid oecumen.
A good augury, I said to myself, for the meeting to take place beyond this threshold, where men who have become one another’s enemy through conflicting interpretations of the Gospel will perhaps succeed today in settling their disputes. And I reproached myself, that I was a weak sinner to bewail my personal problems when such important events for the history of Christianity were about to take place. I measured the smallness of my sufferings against the great promise of peace and serenity confirmed in the stone of the tympanum. I asked God’s forgiveness for my frailty, and I crossed the threshold with new serenity.
The moment I entered I saw the members of both legations, complete, facing one another on a series of benches arranged in a hemicycle, the two sides separated by a table where the abbot and Cardinal Bertrand were sitting.
William, whom I followed in order to take notes, placed me among the Minorites, where Michael sat with his followers and other Franciscans of the court of Avignon, for the meeting was not meant to seem a duel between Italians and French, but a debate between supporters of the Franciscan Rule and their critics, all united by sound, Catholic loyalty to the papal court.
With Michael of Cesena were Brother Arnold of Aquitaine, Brother Hugh of Newcastle, and Brother William Alnwick, who had taken part in the Perugia chapter, and also the Bishop of Kaffa and Berengar Talloni, Bonagratia of Bergamo, and other Minorites from the Avignon court. On the opposite side sat Lawrence Decoin, bachelor of Avignon, the Bishop of Padua, and Jean d’Anneaux, doctor of theology in Paris. Next to Bernard Gui, silent and pensive, there was the Dominican Jean de Baune, in Italy called Giovanni Dalbena. Years before, William told me, he had been inquisitor at Narbonne, where he had tried many Beghards; but when he found heresy in a proposition concerning the poverty of Christ, Berengar Talloni, reader in the convent of that city, rose against him and appealed to the Pope. At that time John was still uncertain about this question, so he summoned both men to his court, where they argued without arriving at any conclusion. Thus a short time later the Franciscans took their stand, which I have described, at the Perugia chapter. Finally, there were still others on the side of the Avignonese, including the Bishop of Alborea.
The session was opened by Abo, who deemed it opportune to sum up recent events. He recalled how in the year of our Lord 1322 the general chapter of the Friars Minor, gathered at Perugia under the leadership of Michael of Cesena, had established with mature and diligent deliberation that, to set an example of the perfect life, Christ and, following his teaching, the apostles had never owned anything in common, whether as property or feud, and this truth was a matter of Catholic faith and doctrine, deduced from various passages in the canonical books. Wherefore renunciation of ownership of all things was meritorious and holy, and the early fathers of the church militant had followed this holy rule. The Council of Vienne in 1312 had also subscribed to this truth, and Pope John himself, in 1317, in the constitution regarding the condition of the Friars Minor which begins “Quorundam exigit,” had referred to the deliberations of that council as devoutly composed, lucid, sound, and mature. Whence the Perugian chapter, considering that what the apostolic see had always approved as sound doctrine should always be held as accepted, nor should it be strayed from in any way, had merely confirmed that council’s decision, with the signature of such masters of sacred theology as Brother William of England, Brother Henry of Germany, Brother Arnold of Aquitaine, provincials and ministers, and also with the seal of Brother Nicholas, minister of France; Brother William Bloc, bachelor; the minister general and the four ministers provincial; Brother Thomas of Bologna; Brother Peter of the province of Saint Francis; Brother Ferdinand of Castello; and Brother Simon of Touraine. However, Abo added, the following year the Pope, issued the decretal Ad conditorem canonum, against which Brother Bonagratia of Bergamo appealed, considering it contrary to the interests of his order. The Pope then took down that decretal from the doors of the church of Avignon where it had been exposed, and revised it in several places. But he actually made it harsher, as was provedthe fact that, as an immediate consequence, Brother Bonagratia was held in prison for a year. Nor could there be any doubts as to the Pontiffs severity, because that same year he issued the now very well known Cum inter nonnullos, in which the theses of the Perugia chapter were definitively condemned.
Politely interrupting Abo at this point, Cardinal Bertrand spoke up, saying we should recall how, to complicate matters and to irritate the Pontiff, in 1324 Louis the Bavarian had intervened with the Declaration of Sachsenhausen, in which for no good reason he confirmed the theses of Perugia (nor was it comprehensible, Bertrand remarked, with a thin smile, that the Emperor should acclaim so enthusiastically a poverty he did not practice in the least), setting himself against the lord Pope, calling him inimicus pacis and saying he was bent on fomenting scandal and discord, and finally calling him a heretic, indeed a heresiarch.
“Not exactly,” Abo ventured, trying to mediate.
“In substance, yes,” Bertrand said sharply. And he added that it was precisely the Emperor’s inopportune meddling that had obliged the lord Pope to issue the decretal Quia quorundam, and that eventually he had sternly bidden Michael of Cesena to appear before him. Michael had sent letters of excuse, declaring himself ill — something no one doubted — and had sent in his stead Brother John Fidanza and Brother Umile Custodio from Perugia. But it so happened, the cardinal went on, that the Guelphs of Perugia had informed the Pope that, far from being ill, Brother Michael was in communication with Louis of Bavaria. In any case, what was past was past, and now Brother Michael looked well and serene, and so was expected in Avignon. However, it was better, the cardinal admitted, to consider beforehand, as prudent men from both sides were now doing, what Michael would finally say to the Pope, since everyone’s aim was still not to exacerbate but, rather, to settle fraternally a dispute that had no reason to exist between a loving father and his devoted sons, and which until then had been kept ablaze only by the interference of secular men, whether emperors or viceroys, who had nothing to do with the questions of Holy Mother Church.
Abo then spoke up and said that, though he was a man of the church and abbot of an order to which the church owed much (a murmur of respect and deference was heard from both sides of the hemicycle), he still did not feel the Emperor should remain aloof from such questions, for the many reasons that Brother William of Baskerville would expound in due course. But, Abo went on, it was nevertheless proper that the first part of the debate should take place between the papal envoys and the representatives of those sons of Saint Francis who, by their very participation in this meeting, showed themselves to be the most devoted sons of the Pope. And then he asked that Brother Michael or his nominee indicate the position he meant to uphold in Avignon.
Michael said that, to his great and joyous emotion, there was in their midst that morning Ubertino of Casale, from whom the Pope himself, in 1322, had asked for a thorough report on the question of poverty. And Ubertino could best sum up, with that lucidity, erudition, and devout faith that all recognized in him, the capital points of those ideas which now, unswervingly, were those of the Franciscan order.
Ubertino rose, and as soon as he began to speak, I understood why he had aroused so much enthusiasm, both as a preacher and as a courtier. Impassioned in his gesticulation, his voice persuasive, his smile fascinating, his reasoning clear and consequential, he held his listeners fast for all the time he spoke. He began a very learned disquisition on the reasons that supported the Perugia theses. He said that, first of all, it had to be recognized that Christ and the apostles were in a double condition, because they were prelates of the church of the New Testament, and in this respect they possessed, as regards the authority of dispensation and distribution, to give to the poor and to the ministers of the church, as is written in the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and this point nobody disputes. But secondarily, Christ and the apostles must be considered as individual persons, the base of every religious perfection, and perfect despisers of the world. And on this score two ways of having are posited, one of which is civil and worldly, which the imperial laws define with the words “in bonis nostris,” because we call ours those goods of which we have the defense and which, if taken from us, we have the right to claim. Whereby it is one thing to defend in a civil and worldly sense one’s own possession against him who would take it, appealing to the imperial judge (to affirm that Christ and the apostles owned things in this sense is heretical, because, as Matthew says in chapter 5, if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also; nor does Luke say any differently in chapter 6, where Christ dismisses from himself all power and lordship and imposes the same on his apostles; and consider further Matthew chapter 19, in which Peter says to the Lord that to follow him they have left everything); but in the other way temporal things can yet be held, for the purpose of common fraternal charity, and in this way Christ and his disciples possessed some goods by natural right, which right by some is called ius poli, that is to say the law of heaven, to sustain nature, which without human intervention is consonant with proper reason, whereas ius fori is power that derives from human covenant. Before the first division of things, as far as ownership was concerned, they were like those things today which are not among anyone’s possessions and are granted to him who takes them; things were in a certain sense common to all men, whereas it was only after original sin that our progenitors began to divide up ownership of things, and thus began worldly dominion as we now know it. But Christ and the apostles held things in the first way, and so they had clothing and the bread and fishes, and as Paul says in I Timothy: Having food and raiment let us be therewith content. Wherefore Christ and his disciples did not hold these things in possession but in use, their absolute poverty remaining intact. Which had already been recognized by Pope Nicholas II in the decretal Exiit qui seminat.
But on the opposite side Jean d’Anneaux rose to say that Ubertino’s positions seemed to him contrary both to proper reason and to the proper interpretation of Scripture. Whereas with goods perishable with use, such as bread and foods, a simple right of use cannot be considered, nor can de-facto use be posited, but only abuse; everything the believers held in common in the primitive church, as is deduced from Acts 2 and 3, they held on the basis of the same type of ownership they had had before their conversion; the apostles, after the descent of the Holy Spirit, possessed farms in Judaea; the vow of living without property does not extend to what man needs in order to live, and when Peter said he had left everything he did not mean he had renounced property; Adam had ownership and property of things; the servant who receives money from his master certainly does not just make use or abuse of it; the words of the Exiit qui seminat to which the Minorites are always referring and which establish that the Friars Minor have only the use of what serves them, without having control and ownership,, must be referring only to goods that are not consumed with use; and in fact if the Exiit included perishable goods it would sustain the impossible; de-facto use cannot be distinguished from juridical control; every human right, on the basis of which material goods are owned, is contained in the laws of kings; Christ as a mortal man, from the moment of his conception, was owner of all earthly goods, and as God he received from the Father universal control over everything; he was owner of clothing, food, money for tribute, and offerings of the faithful; and if he was poor, it was not because he had no property, but because he did not receive its fruits; for simple juridical control, separated from the collection of interest, does not enrich the possessor; and finally, even if the Exiit had said otherwise, the Roman Pontiff, in everything concerning faith and morals, can revoke the decisions of his predecessors and can even make contrary assertions.
It was at this point that Brother Jerome, Bishop of Kaffa, rose vehemently, his beard shaking with wrath even though he tried to make his words sound conciliatory. He began an argumentation that to me seemed fairly confused. “What I will say to the Holy Father, and myself who will say it, I submit to his correction, because I truly believe John is the vicar of Christ, and for this confession I was seized by the Saracens. And I will refer first to an event recorded by a great doctor, in the dispute that arose one day among monks as to who was the father of Melchizedek. Then the abbot Copes, questioned about this, shook his head and declared: Woe to you, Copes, for you seek only those things that God does not command you to seek and neglect those He does command. There, as is readily deduced from my example, it is so clear that Christ and the Blessed Virgin and the apostles held nothing, individually or in common, that it would be less clear to recognize that Jesus was man and God at the same time, and yet it seems clear to me that anyone denying the evidence of the former must then deny the latter!”
He spoke triumphantly, and I saw William raise his eyes to heaven. I suspect he considered Jerome’s syllogism quite defective, and I cannot say he was wrong, but even more defective, it seemed to me, was the infuriated and contrary argumentation of Jean de Baune, who said that he who affirms something about the poverty of Christ affirms what is seen (or not seen) with the eye, whereas to define his simultaneous humanity and divinity, faith intervenes, so that the two propositions cannot be compared.
In reply, Jerome was more acute than his opponent: “Oh, no, dear brother,” he said, “I think exactly the opposite is true, because all the Gospels declare Christ was a man and ate and drank, and as his most evident miracles demonstrate, he was also God, and all this is immediately obvious!”
“Magicians and soothsayers also work miracles,” de Baune said smugly.
“True,” Jerome replied, “but through magic art. Would you compare Christ’s miracles to magic art?” The assembly murmured indignantly that they would not consider such a thing. “And finally,” Jerome went on, feeling he was now close to victory, “would his lordship the Cardinal del Poggetto want to consider heretical the belief in Christ’s poverty, when this proposition is the basis of the Rule of an order such as the Franciscan, whose sons have gone to every realm to preach and shed their blood, from Morocco to India?”
“Holy spirit of Peter of Spain,” William muttered, “protect us.”
“Most beloved brother,” de Baune then cried, taking a step forward, “speak if you will of the blood of your monks, but do not forget, that same tribute has also been paid by religious of other orders…”
“With all due respect to my lord cardinal,” Jerome shouted, “no Dominican ever died among the infidels, whereas in my own time alone, nine Minorites have been martyred!”
The Dominican Bishop of Alborea, red in the face, now stood up. “I can prove that before any Minorites were in Tartary, Pope Innocent sent three Dominicans there!”
“He did?” Jerome said, snickering. “Well, I know that the Minorites have been in Tartary for eighty years, and they have forty churches throughout the country, whereas the Dominicans have only five churches, all along the coast, and perhaps fifteen monks in all. And that settles the question!”
“It does not settle any question at all,” the Bishop of Alborea shouted, “because these Minorites, who produce heretics as bitches produce puppies, claim everything for themselves, boast of martyrs, but have fine churches, sumptuous vestments, and buy and sell like all the other religious!”
“No, my lord, no,” Jerome interrupted, “they do not buy and sell on their own, but through the procurators of the apostolic see, and the procurators have possession, while the Minorites have only the use!”
“Is that so?” the bishop sneered. “And how many times, then, have you sold without procurators? I know the story of some farms that — ”
“If I did so, I was wrong,” Jerome hastily interrupted, “not to turn that over to the order may have been a weakness on my part!”
“Venerable brothers,” Abo then intervened, “our problem is not whether the Minorites are poor, but whether our Lord was poor…”
“Well, then” — at this point Jerome raised his voice again — “on that question I have an argument that cuts like a sword…”
“Saint Francis, protect thy sons …” William said, without much confidence.
“The argument,” Jerome continued, “is that the Orientals and the Greeks, far more familiar than we with the doctrine of the holy fathers, are convinced of the poverty of Christ. And if those heretics and schismatics so clearly uphold such a clear truth, do we want to be more heretical and schismatical than they, by denying it? These Orientals, if they heard some of our number preaching against this truth, would stone them!”
“What are you saying?” the Bishop of Alborea quipped. “Why, then, do they not stone the Dominicans, who preach precisely against this?”
“Dominicans? Why, no one has ever seen them down there!”
Alborea, his face purple, observed that this monk Jerome had been in Greece perhaps fifteen years, whereas he had been there since his boyhood. Jerome replied that the Dominican Alborea might perhaps have been in Greece, but living a sybaritic life in fine bishops’ aces, whereas he, a Franciscan, had been there not fifteen years, but twenty-two, and had preached before the Emperor in Constantinople. Then Alborea, running short on arguments, started to cross the space that separated him from the Minorites, indicating in a loud voice and with words I dare not repeat his firm intention to pull off the beard of the Bishop of Kaffa, whose masculinity he called into question, and whom he planned to punish, by the logic of an eye for an eye, shoving that beard in a certain place.
The other Minorites rushed to form a barrier and defend their brother; the Avignonese thought it useful to lend the Dominican a hand, and (Lord, have mercy on the best among thy sons!) a brawl ensued, which the abbot and the cardinal tried to quell. In the tumult that followed, Minorites and Dominicans said grave things to one another, as if each were a Christian fighting the Saracens. The only ones who remained in their seats were William, on one side, and Bernard Gui, on the other. William seemed sad, and Bernard happy, if you can call happiness the faint smile that curled the inquisitor’s lip.
“Are there no better arguments,” I asked my master, as Alborea tugged at the beard of the Bishop of Kaffa, “to prove or refute the poverty of Christ?”
“Why, you can affirm both positions, my good Adso,” William said, “and you will never be able to establish on the basis of the Gospels whether, and to what extent, Christ considered as his property the tunic he wore, which he then perhaps threw away when it was worn out. And, if you like, the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas on property is bolder than that of us Minorites. We say: We own nothing and have everything in use. He said: Consider yourselves also owners, provided that, if anyone lacks what you possess, you grant him its use, and out of obligation, not charity. But the question is not whether Christ was poor: it is whether the church must be poor. And ‘poor’ does not so much mean owning a palace or not; it means, rather, keeping or renouncing the right to legislate on earthly matters.”
“Then this,” I said, “is why the Emperor is so interested in what the Minorites say about poverty.”
“Exactly. The Minorites are playing the Emperor’s game against the Pope. But Marsilius and I consider it a two-sided game, and we would like the empire to support our view and serve our idea of human rule.”
“And will you say this when you are called on to speak?”
“If I say it I fulfill my mission, which was to expound the opinions of the imperial theologians. But if I say it my mission fails, because I ought to be facilitating a second meeting in Avignon, and I don’t believe John would agree to my going there to say these things.”
“And so —?”
“And so I am trapped between two opposing forces, like an ass who does not know which of two sacks of hay to eat. The time is not ripe. Marsilius raves of an impossible transformation, immediately; but Louis is no better than his predecessors, even if for the present he remains the only bulwark against a wretch like John. Perhaps I shall have to speak, unless they end up killing one another first. In any case, Adso, write it all down: let at least some trace remain of what is happening today.”
As we were speaking — and truly I do not know how we managed to hear each other — the dispute reached its climax. The archers intervened, at a sign from Bernard Gui, to keep the two factions apart. But like besiegers and besieged, on both sides of the walls of a fortress, they hurled insults and rebuttals at one another, which I record here at random, unable to attribute them to specific speakers, and with the premise that the phrases were not uttered in turn, as would happen in a dispute in my country, but in Mediterranean fashion, one overlapping another, like the waves of an angry sea.
“The Gospel says Christ had a purse!”
“Shut up! You people paint that purse even on crucifixes! What do you say, then, of the fact that our Lord, when he entered Jerusalem, went back every night to Bethany?”
“If our Lord chose to go and sleep in Bethany, who are you to question his decision?”
“No, you old ass, our Lord returned to Bethany because he had no money to pay for an inn in Jerusalem!”
“Bonagratia, you’re the ass here! What did our Lord eat in Jerusalem?”
“Would you say, then, that a horse who receives oats from his master to keep alive is the owner of the oats?”
“You see? You compare Christ to a horse…”
“No, you are the one who compares Christ to a simoniacal prelate of your court, vessel of dung!”
“Really? And how many lawsuits has the holy see had to undertake to protect your property?”
“The property of the church, not ours! We had it in use!”
“In use to spend, to build beautiful churches with gold statues, you hypocrites, whited sepulchers, sinks of iniquity! You know well that charity, not poverty, is the principle of the perfect life!”
“That is what your glutton Thomas said!”
“Mind your words, villain! The man you call ‘glutton’ is a saint of the holy Roman church!”
“Saint, my foot! Canonized by John to spite the Franciscans! Your Pope can’t create saints, because he’s a heretic! No, a heresiarch!”
“We’ve heard that one before! Words spoken by that Bavarian puppet at Sachsenhausen, rehearsed by your Ubertino!”
“Mind how you speak, pig, son of the whore of Babylon and other strumpets as well! You know Ubertino wasn’t with the Emperor that year: he was right there in Avignon, in the service of Cardinal Orsini, and the Pope was sending him as a messenger to Aragon!”
“I know, I know, he took his vow of poverty at the cardinal’s table, as he now lives in the richest abbey of the peninsula! Ubertino, if you weren’t there, who prompted Louis to use your writings?”
“Is it my fault if Louis reads my writings? Surely he cannot read yours, you illiterate!”
“I? Illiterate? Was your Francis a literate, he who spoke with geese?”
“You blaspheme!”
“You’re the blasphemer; you know the keg ritual!”
“I have never seen such a thing, and you know it!”
“Yes, you did, you and your little friars, when you slipped into the bed of Clare of Montefalco!”
“May God strike you! I was inquisitor at that time, and Clare had already died in the odor of sanctity!”
“Clare gave off the odor of sanctity, but you were sniffing another odor when you sang matins to the nuns!”
“Go on, go on, the wrath of God will reach you, as it will reach your master, who has given welcome to two heretics like that Ostrogoth Eckhart and that English necromancer you call Branucerton!”
“Venerable brothers, venerable brothers!” Cardinal Bertrand and the abbot shouted.
The quarrel was still raging when one of the novices guarding the door came in, passing through that confusion like someone walking across a field lashed by hail. He approached William, to whisper that Severinus wanted urgently to speak to him. We went out into the narthex, which was crowded with curious monks trying, through the shouts and noise, to catch something of what was going on inside. In the first rank we saw Aymaro of Alessandria, who welcomed us with his usual condescending sneer of commiseration at the foolishness of the universe. “To be sure, since the rise of the mendicant orders Christianity has become more virtuous,” he said.
William brushed him aside with a certain roughness and headed for Severinus, awaiting us in a corner. He was distressed and wanted to speak to us in private, but it was impossible to find a calm spot in that confusion. We thought to go outside, but Michael of Cesena looked out through the doorway of the chapter hall, bidding William to come back in, because, he said, the quarrel was being settled and the series of speeches should be resumed.
William, torn between two bags of hay, urged Severinus to speak, and the herbalist did his best to keep others from overhearing.
“Berengar certainly came to the infirmary before he went to the balneary,” he said.
“How do you know?” Some monks approached, their curiosity aroused by our confabulation. Severinus’s voice sank still lower, as he looked around.
“You told me that that man … must have had something with him… Well, I found something in my laboratory, among the other books … a book that is not mine, a strange book…”
“That must be it,” William said triumphantly. “Bring it to me at once.”
“I can’t,” Severinus said. “I’ll explain to you later. I have discovered … I believe I have discovered something interesting… You must come, I have to show you the book … cautiously…” He broke off. We realized that, silently as was his custom, Jorge had appeared as if by magic at our side. His hands were extended before him, as if, not used to moving in that place, he were trying to sense his direction. A normal person would not have been able to comprehend Severinus’s whispers, but we had learned some time before that forge’s hearing, like that of all blind men, was especially sharp.
Still, the old man seemed to have heard nothing. He moved, in fact, in the direction away from us, touched one of the monks, and asked him something. The monk took him gently by the arm and led him outside. At that moment Michael reappeared, again summoning William, and my master made a decision. “Please,” he said to Severinus, “go back at once to the place from whence you came. Lock yourself inside and wait for me. You” — he said to me — “follow Jorge. Even if he did hear something, I don’t believe he will have himself led to the infirmary. In any case, you will tell me where he goes.”
As he started to go back into the hall, he noticed (as I also noticed) Aymaro pushing his way through the jostling crowd in order to follow Jorge outside. Here William acted unwisely, because now in a loud voice, from one end of the narthex to the other, he said to Severinus, who was at the outer threshold, “Make sure those papers are safe… Don’t go back to … where they came from!” Just as I was preparing to follow Jorge, I saw the cellarer leaning against the iamb of the outside door; he had heard William’s warnings and was looking from my master to the herbalist, his face tense with fear. He saw Severinus going out and followed him. On the threshold, I was afraid of losing sight of Jorge, who was about to be swallowed up by the fog, but the other two, heading in the opposite direction, were also on the verge of vanishing into the brume. I calculated rapidly what I should do. I had been ordered to follow the blind man, but because it was feared he was going toward the infirmary. Instead, his guide was taking him in another direction: he was crossing the cloister, heading for the church or the Aedificium. The cellarer, on the contrary, was surely following the herbalist, and William was worried about what could happen in the laboratory. So I started following the two men, wondering, among other things, where Aymaro had gone, unless he had come out for reasons quite removed from ours.
Keeping a reasonable distance, I did not lose sight of the cellarer, who was slowing his pace because he had realized I was following him. He couldn’t be sure the shadow at his heels was mine, as I couldn’t be sure the shadow whose heels I followed belonged to him; but as I had no doubts about him, he had none about me.
Forcing him to keep an eye on me, I prevented him from dogging Severinus too closely. And so when the door of the infirmary appeared in the mist it was closed. Severinus had already gone inside, heaven be thanked. The cellarer turned once again to look at me,, while I stood motionless as a tree of the garden; then he seemed to come to a decision and he moved toward the kitchen. I felt I had fulfilled my mission, so I decided to go back and report. Perhaps I made a mistake: if I had remained on guard, many other misfortunes would have been averted. But this I know now; I did not know it then.
I went back into the chapter hall. That busybody, it seemed to me, did not represent a great danger. I approached William again and briefly gave him my report. He nodded his approval, then motioned me to be silent. The confusion was now abating… The legates on both sides were exchanging the kiss of peace. The Bishop of Alborea praised the faith of the Minorites. Jerome exalted the charity of the preachers, all expressed the hope of a church no longer racked by internal conflicts. Some praised the strength of one group, some the temperance of another; all invoked justice and counseled prudence. Never have I seen so many men so sincerely concerned with the triumph of the cardinal and theological virtues.
But now Bertrand del Poggetto was inviting William to expound the theses of the imperial theologians. William rose, reluctantly: he was realizing that the meeting was of no utility, and in any case he was in a hurry to leave, for the mysterious book was now more urgent for him, than the results of the meeting. But it was clear he could not evade his duty.
He began speaking then, with many “eh”s and “oh”s, perhaps more than usual and more than proper, as if to make it clear he was absolutely unsure about the things he was going to say, and he opened by affirming that he understood perfectly the viewpoint of those who had spoken before him, and for that matter what others called the “doctrine” of the imperial theologians was no more than some scattered observations that did not claim to be established articles of faith.
He said, further, that, given the immense goodness that God had displayed in creating the race of His sons, loving them all without distinction, recalling those pages of Genesis in which there was yet no mention of priests and kings, considering also that the Lord had given to Adam and to his descendants power over the things of this earth, provided they obeyed the divine laws, we might infer that the Lord also was not averse to the idea that in earthly things the people should be legislator and effective first cause of the law. By the term “people,” he said, it would be best to signify all citizens, but since among citizens children must be included, as well as idiots, malefactors, and women, perhaps it would be possible to arrive reasonably at a definition of the people as the better part of the citizens, though he himself at the moment did not consider it opportune to assert who actually belonged to that part.
He cleared his throat, apologized to his listeners, remarking that the atmosphere was certainly very damp, and suggested that the way in which the people could express its will might be an elective general assembly. He said that to him it seemed sensible for such an assembly to be empowered to interpret, change, or suspend the law, because if the law is made by one man alone, he could do harm through ignorance or malice, and William added that it was unnecessary to remind those present of numerous recent instances. I noticed that the listeners, rather puzzled by his previous words, could only assent to these last ones, because each was obviously thinking of a different person, and each considered very bad the person of whom he was thinking.
Well, then, William continued, if one man can make laws badly, will not many men be better? Naturally, he underlined, he was speaking of earthly laws, regarding the management of civil things. God had told Adam not to eat of the tree of good and evil, and that was divine law; but then He had authorized, or, rather, encouraged, Adam to give things names, and on that score He had allowed His terrestrial subject free rein. In fact, though some in our times say that nomina sunt consequentia rerum, the book of Genesis is actually quite explicit on this point: God brought all the animals unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And though surely the first man had been clever enough to call, in his Adamic language, every thing and animal according to its nature, nevertheless he was exercising a kind of sovereign right in imagining the name that in his opinion best corresponded to that nature. Because, in fact, it is now known that men impose different names to designate concepts, though only the concepts, signs of things, are the same for all. So that surely the word “nomen” comes from “nomos,” that is to say “law,” since nomina are given by men ad placitum, in other words by free and collective accord.
The listeners did not dare contest this learned demonstration.
Whereby, William concluded, is it clear that legislation over the things of this earth, and therefore over the things of the cities and kingdoms, has nothing to do with the custody and administration of the divine word, an unalienable privilege of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Unhappy indeed, William said, are the infidels, who have no similar authority to interpret for them the divine word (and all felt sorry for the infidels). But does this perhaps entitle us to say that the infidels do not have the tendency to make laws and administer their affairs through governments, kings, emperors, or sultans, caliphs, or however you chose to call them? And could it be denied that many Roman emperors — Trajan, for instance — had exercised their temporal power with wisdom? And who gave the pagans and the infidels this natural capacity to legislate and live in political communities? Was it perhaps their false divinities, who necessarily do not exist (or do not exist necessarily, however you understand the negation of this modality)? Certainly not. It could only have been conferred by the God of hosts, the God of Israel, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… Wondrous proof of the divine goodness that conferred the capacity for judging political things also on those who deny the authority of the Roman Pontiff and do not profess the same sacred, sweet, and terrible mysteries of the Christian people! But what finer demonstration than this of the fact that temporal rule and secular jurisdiction have nothing to do with the church and with the law of Jesus Christ and were ordained by God beyond all ecclesiastical confirmation and even before our holy religion was founded?
He coughed again, but this time he was not alone. Many of those present were wriggling on their benches and clearing their throats. I saw the cardinal run his tongue over his lips and make a gesture, anxious but polite, to urge William to get to the point. And William now grappled with what seemed to all, even to those who did not share them, the perhaps unpleasant conclusions of his incontrovertible reasoning. William said that his deductions seemed to him supported by the very example of Christ, who did not come into this world to command, but to be subject to the conditions he found in the world, at least as far as the laws of Caesar were concerned. He did not want the apostles to have command and dominion, and therefore it seemed a wise thing that the successors of the apostles should be relieved of any worldly or coercive power. If the pope, the bishops, and the priests were not subject to the worldly and coercive power of the prince, the authority of the prince would be challenged, and thus, with it, an order would be challenged that, as had been demonstrated previously, had been decreed by God. To be sure, some delicate cases must be considered — William said — like those of the heretics, on whose heresy only the church, custodian of the truth, can pronounce, though only the secular arm can act. When the church identifies some heretics she must surely point them out to the prince, who must rightly be informed of the conditions of his citizens. But what should the prince do with a heretic? Condemn him in the name of that divine truth of which he is not the custodian? The prince can and must condemn the heretic if his action harms the community, that is, if the heretic, in declaring his heresy, kills or impedes those who do not share it. But at that point the power of the prince ends, because no one on this earth can be forced through torture to follow the precepts of the Gospel: otherwise what would become of that free will on the exercising of which each of us will be judged in the next world? The church can and must warn the heretic that he is abandoning the community of the faithful, but she cannot judge him on earth and force him against his will. If Christ had wanted his priests to obtain coercive power, he would have laid down specific precepts as Moses did in the ancient law. He did not do it; therefore he did not wish it. Or does someone want to suggest the idea that he did wish it but lacked the time or the ability to say so in three years of preaching? But it was right that he should not wish it, because if he had wished it, then the pope would be able to impose his will on the king, and Christianity would no longer be a law of freedom, but one of intolerable slavery.
All this, William added with a cheerful expression, is no limitation of the powers of the supreme Pontiff, but, rather, an exaltation of his mission: because the servant of the servants of God is on this earth to serve and not to be served. And, finally, it would be odd, to say the least, if the Pope had jurisdiction over the things of the Roman Empire’ but not over the other kingdoms of the earth. As everyone knows, what the Pope says on divine questions is as valid for the subjects of the King of France as it is for those of the King of England, but it must be valid also for the subjects of the Great Khan or the Sultan of the infidels, who are called infidels precisely because they are not faithful to this beautiful truth. And so if the Pope were to assume he had temporal jurisdiction — as pope — only over the affairs of the empire, that might justify the suspicion that, identifying temporal jurisdiction with the spiritual, by that same token he would have no spiritual jurisdiction over not only the Saracens or the Tartars, but also over the French and the English — which would be a criminal blasphemy. And this was the reason, my master concluded, why it seemed right to him to suggest that the church of Avignon was injuring all mankind by asserting the right to approve or suspend him who had been elected emperor of the Romans. The Pope does not have greater rights over the empire than over other kingdoms, and since neither the King of France nor the Sultan is subject to the Pope’s approval, there seems to be no good reason why the Emperor of the Germans and Italians should be subject to it. Such subjection is not a matter of divine right, because Scripture does not speak of it. Nor is it sanctioned by the rights of peoples, for the reasons already expounded. As for the connection with the dispute about poverty, William added, his own humble opinions, developed in the form of conversational suggestions by him and by some others such as Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun, led to the following conclusions: if the Franciscans wanted to remain poor, the Pope could not and should not oppose such a virtuous wish. To be sure, if the hypothesis of Christ’s poverty were to be proved, this would not only help the Minorites but also strengthen the idea that Jesus had not wished any earthly jurisdiction. But that morning he, William, had heard very wise people assert that it could not be proved that Christ had been poor. Whence it seemed to him more fitting to reverse the demonstration. Since nobody had asserted, or could assert, that Jesus had sought any earthly jurisdiction for himself or for his disciples, this detachment of Jesus from temporal things seemed sufficient evidence to suggest the belief, without sinning, that Jesus, on the contrary, preferred poverty.
William had spoken in such a meek tone, he had expressed his certainties in such a hesitant way, that none of those present was able to stand up, and rebut. This does not mean that all were convinced of what he had said. The Avignonese were now writhing, frowning, and muttering comments among themselves, and even the abbot seemed unfavorably impressed by those words, as if he were thinking this was not the relationship he had desired between his order and the empire. And as for the Minorites, Michael of Cesena was puzzled, Jerome aghast, Ubertino pensive.
The silence was broken by Cardinal del Poggetto, still smiling and relaxed as he politely asked William whether he would go to Avignon to say these same thins to the lord Pope. William asked the opinion of the cardinal, who said that the Pope had heard many debatable opinions uttered during his life and was a most loving father toward all his sons, but surely these propositions would grieve him very much.
Bernard Gui, who until then had not opened his mouth, now spoke up: “I would be very happy if Brother William, so skilled and eloquent in expounding his own ideas, were to submit them to the judgment of the Pontiff…”
“You have convinced me, my lord Bernard,” William said. “I will not come.” Then, addressing the cardinal, in an apologetic tone: “You know, this fluxion that is affecting my chest dissuades me from undertaking such a long journey in this season…”
“Then why did you speak at such length?” the cardinal asked.
“To bear witness to the truth,” William said humbly. “The truth shall make us free.”
“Ah, no!” Jean de Baune exploded at this point. “Here we are not talking about the truth that makes us free, but about excessive freedom that wants to set itself up as truth!”
“That is also possible,” William admitted sweetly.
My intuition suddenly warned me that another tempest of hearts and tongues was about to burst, far more furious than, the earlier one. But nothing happened. While de Baune was still speaking, the captain of the archers entered and went to whisper something into Bernard’s ear. Bernard rose abruptly and held up his hand to speak.
“Brothers,” he said, “it is possible this profitable discussion may be resumed, but for the moment an event of tremendous gravity obliges us to suspend our session, with the abbot’s permission. Something has happened there…” He pointed vaguely outside, then strode through the hall and went out. Many followed him, William among the first, and I with him.
My master looked at me and said, “I fear something has happened to Severinus.”
We crossed the grounds with a rapid step, in anguish. The captain of the archers led us toward the infirmary, and as we arrived there we glimpsed in the thick grayness a stirring of shadows: monks and servants were rushing about, archers were standing outside the door to prevent access.
“Those guards were sent by me, to seek a man who could shed light on many mysteries,” Bernard said.
“The brother herbalist?” the abbot asked, dumbfounded.
“No. You will see now,” Bernard said, making his way inside.
We entered Severinus’s laboratory, and here a painful sight greeted our eyes. The unfortunate herbalist lay, a corpse, in a pool of blood, his head bashed in. On every side the shelves seemed to have been devastated by a storm: pots, bottles, books, documents lay all around in great disorder, ruined. Beside the body was an armillary sphere at least twice the size of a man’s head, of finely worked metal, surmounted by a gold cross, and set on a short, decorated tripod. On other occasions I had noticed it on the table to the left of the front door.
At the other end of the room two archers were holding the cellarer fast, though he wriggled and proclaimed his innocence, increasing his noise when he saw the abbot enter. “My lord!” he cried out. “Appearances are against me! Severinus was already dead when I came in, and they found me staring at this massacre, speechless!”
The archers’ captain went over to Bernard, and with his permission made a report, in front of everyone. The archers had been ordered to find the cellarer and arrest him, and for over two hours they had searched for him throughout the abbey. This, I thought, must have been the command Bernard had given before entering the hall; and the soldiers, foreigners in this place, had probably pursued their search in the wrong places, without realizing that the cellarer, unaware of his fate, was with the others in the narthex; the fog had also made their hunt more difficult. In any case, from the captain’s words it emerged that Remigio, after I left him, went toward the kitchen, where someone saw him and informed the archers, who reached the Aedificium after Remigio had left it again, missing them only by a moment. In the kitchen was Jorge, who declared he had just finished speaking with the cellarer. The archers then explored the grounds in the direction of the gardens, and there, emerging from the mist like a ghost, they found old Alinardo, who seemed lost. It was Alinardo who said he had seen the cellarer, a short while before, going into the infirmary. The archers went there and found the door open. Once inside, they discovered Severinus lifeless and the cellarer furiously rummaging over the shelves, flinging everything on the floor, as if he were hunting for something. It was easy to see what had happened, the captain concluded. Remigio had entered, had attacked the herbalist and killed him, and then was seeking the thing for which he had killed.
An archer picked the armillary sphere up from the floor and handed it to Bernard. The elegant architecture of brass and silver circles, held together by a stronger frame of bronze rings grasped by the stem of the tripod, had been brought down heavily on the victim’s skull, and at the impact many of the finer circles had shattered or bent to one side. This side was the one brought down on Severinus’s head, as was revealed by traces of blood and even tufts of hair and horrible gobbets of cerebral matter.
William bent over Severinus to verify his death. The poor man’s eyes, veiled by the streams of blood from his head, were fixed, and I wondered if it were ever possible to read in the stiffened pupil, as it has been said in some cases, the image of the murderer, the last vestige of the victim’s perception. I saw that William sought the dead man’s hands, to see if he had black stains on his fingers, even though, this time, the cause of death was obviously quite different: but Severinus was wearing the same leather gloves with which I had occasionally seen him handling dangerous herbs, lizards, and unfamiliar insects.
Meanwhile, Bernard Gui was addressing the cellarer: “Remigio of Varagine — that is your name, is it not? I had sent my men after you on the basis of other accusations and to confirm other suspicions. Now I see that I acted properly, although, to my regret, too slowly. My lord,” he said to the abbot, “I hold myself virtually responsible for this last crime, because I have known since this morning that this man should be taken into custody, after I heard the revelations of that other wretch, arrested last night. But as you saw for yourself, during the morning I was occupied with other duties, and my men did their best…”
He spoke in a loud voice so that all those present could hear (and the room had meanwhile filled up, people crowding into every corner, looking at the things scattered and destroyed, pointing to the corpse and commenting in low voices on the crime), and, as he spoke, I glimpsed Malachi in the little crowd, grimly observing the scene. The cellarer, about to be dragged away, also glimpsed him. He wrested himself from the archer’s grasp and flung himself on his brother, grabbing him by the habit and speaking to him briefly and desperately, his face close to the other man’s, until the archers seized him again. But, as he was being led off roughly, he turned again toward Malachi and shouted at him, “You swear, and I swear!”
Malachi did not answer at once, as if he were seeking the most suitable words. Then, as the cellarer was being pulled across the threshold, he said, “I will do nothing to harm you.”
William and I looked at each other, wondering what was the meaning of this scene. Bernard had also observed it, but did not appear upset by it; rather, he smiled at Malachi, as if to approve his words and to seal with him a sinister bargain. Then he announced that immediately after our meal a first court would meet in the chapter hall to open this investigation publicly. And he went out, ordering the cellarer to be taken to the forges, but not allowed to speak with Salvatore.
At that moment we heard Benno calling us, at our back. “I came in right after you,” he said in a whisper, “when the room was still half empty, and Malachi was not here.”
“He must have entered afterward,” William said.
“No,” Benno insisted, “I was near the door, I saw the people come in. I tell you, Malachi was already inside … before.”
“Before what?”
“Before the cellarer entered. I cannot swear it, but I believe he came from behind that curtain, when there were already many of us in here.” And he nodded toward an ample hanging that concealed the bed where Severinus had usually made anyone who had been given some medication lie down and rest.
“Are you insinuating he killed Severinus and hid there when the cellarer came in?” William asked.
“Or else from behind the curtain he witnessed what happened out here. Why, otherwise, would the cellarer have implored him not to harm him, promising in return not to do him harm, either?”
“That is possible,” William said. “In any case, there was a book here and it should still be here, because both the cellarer and Malachi went out empty-handed.” William knew from my report that Benno knew; and at that moment he needed help. He went over to the abbot, who was sadly observing Severinus’s corpse; William asked him to make everyone leave, because he wanted to examine the place more closely. The abbot consented and then left, not without giving William a skeptical look, as if reproaching him for always arriving too late. Malachi tried to remain, inventing various reasons, all quite vague; William pointed out that this was not the library, and that here Malachi could claim no rights. William was polite but inflexible, and he got his revenge for the time when Malachi had not allowed him to examine Venantius’s desk.
When only three of us were left, William cleared the rubble and papers away from one of the tables and told me to hand him, one after another, the books in Severinus’s collection. A small collection, compared with the immense one of the labyrinth, but still there were dozens and dozens of volumes, of various sizes, which had formerly stood neatly on the shelves and now lay in disorder on the ground among other objects, already disturbed by the cellarer’s frantic hands, some even torn, as if he were seeking not a book but something that could be placed between the pages of a book. Some had been ripped violently, separated from their binding. To collect them, rapidly ascertain their subject, and pile them up on the table was no easy undertaking; and everything had to be done in haste, because the abbot had given us little time: the monks had to come in and lay out Severinus’s battered body and prepare it for burial. We also had to move about, search under the tables, behind the shelves, in the cupboards, to see whether anything had escaped the first inspection. William would not let Benno help me and allowed him only to stand guard at the door. Despite the abbot’s orders, many were pressing to enter: servants terrified by the news, monks mourning their brother, novices carrying clean cloths and basins of water to wash and enshroud the corpse…
So we had to act fast. I grabbed the books and handed them to William, who examined them and set them on the table. Then we realized it was a long job, and we proceeded together: I would pick up a book, smooth it out if it was ruffled, read its title, and set it down. In many cases there were only scattered pages.
“De plantis libri tres. Damnation, that’s not it,” William said, slamming the book on the table.
“Thesaurus herbarum,” I said, and William snapped, “Drop it; we’re looking for a Greek book!”
“This?” I asked, showing him a work whose pages were covered with abstruse letters. And William said, “No, that’s Arabic, idiot! Bacon was right: the scholar’s first duty is to learn languages!”
“But you don’t know Arabic, either!” I replied, irked, to which William answered, “At least I understand when it is Arabic!” And I blushed, because I could hear Benno snickering behind my back.
There were many books, and even more notes, scrolls with drawings of the heavenly vault, catalogues of strange plants, written on scattered pages, probably by the dead man. We worked a long time, exploring every corner of the laboratory. William, with great coldness, even shifted the corpse to see whether there was anything beneath it, and he rummaged inside the habit. Nothing.
“It has to be done,” he said. “Severinus locked himself in here with a book. The cellarer didn’t have it…”
“Can he have hidden it inside his habit?” I asked. “No, the book I saw the other morning under Venantius’s desk was big, and we would have noticed.”
“How was it bound?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It was lying open, and I saw it only for a few seconds, just long enough to realize it was in Greek, but I remember nothing else. Let us continue; the cellarer didn’t take it, nor, I believe, did Malachi.”
“Absolutely not,” Benno confirmed. “When the cellarer grabbed him by the chest, it was obvious he could have nothing under his scapular.”
“Good. Or, rather, bad. If the book is not in this room, obviously someone else, besides Malachi and the cellarer, had come in here before.”
“A third person, then, who killed Severinus?”
“Too many people,” William said.
“But anyway,” I asked, “who could have known the book was here?”
“Jorge, for example, if he overheard us.”
“Yes,” I said, “but Jorge couldn’t have killed a strong man like Severinus, and with such violence.”
“No, certainly not. Besides, you saw him going toward the Aedificium, and the archers found him in the kitchen shortly before they found the cellarer. So he wouldn’t have had time to come here and then go back to the kitchen.”
“Let me think with my own head,” I said, aiming at emulating my master. “Alinardo was moving around in the vicinity, but he, too, can hardly stand, and he couldn’t have overpowered Severinus. The cellarer was here, but the time between his leaving the kitchen and the arrival of the archers was so short that I think it would have been difficult for him to make Severinus open the door, to attack and kill him, and then to make all this mess. Malachi could have come before them all: Jorge hears us in the narthex, he goes to the scriptorium to tell Malachi that a book from the library is in Severinus’s laboratory, Malachi comes here, persuades Severinus to open the door, and kills him, God knows why. But if he was looking for the book, he should have recognized it, without all this ransacking, because he’s the librarian! So who’s left?”
“Benno,” William said.
Benno shook his head, in vigorous denial. “No, Brother William, you know I was consumed with curiosity. But if I had come in here and had been able to leave with the book, I would not be here now keeping you company; I would be examining my treasure somewhere else…”
“An almost convincing argument,” William said, smiling. “However, you don’t know what the book looks like, either. You could have killed and now you would be here trying to identify the book.”
Benno blushed violently. “I am not a murderer!” he protested.
“No one is, until he commits his first crime,” William said philosophically. “Anyway, the book is missing, and this is sufficient proof that you didn’t leave it here.”
Then he turned to contemplate the corpse. He seemed only at that point to take in his friend’s death. “Poor Severinus,” he said, “I had suspected even you and your poisons. And you were expecting some trick with poison; otherwise you wouldn’t have worn those gloves. You feared a danger of the earth and instead it came to you from the heavenly vault…” He picked up the sphere again, observing it with attention. “I wonder why they used thit particular weapon…”
“It was within reach.”
“Perhaps. But there were other things, pots, gardening tools… It is a fine example of the craft of metals and of astronomical science. It is ruined and … Good heavens!” he cried,
“What is it?”
“And the third part of the sun was smitten and the third part of the moon and the third part of the stars …” he quoted.
I knew all too well the text of John the apostle. “The fourth trumpet,” I exclaimed.
“In fact. First hail, then blood, then water, and now the stars … If this is the case, then everything must be re-examined; the murderer did not strike at random, he was following a plan… But is it possible to imagine a mind so evil that he kills only when he can do so while following the dictates of the book of the Apocalypse?”
“What will happen with the fifth trumpet?” I asked, terrified. I tried to recall: ‘And I saw a star fallen from heaven unto the earth and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit… Will somebody die by drowning in the well?”
“The fifth trumpet also promises many other things,” William said. “From the pit will come the smoke of a great furnace, then locusts will come from it to torment mankind with a sting similar to a scorpion’s. And the shape of the locusts will resemble that of horses, with gold crowns on their heads and lions’ teeth… Our man could have various means at his disposal to carry out the words of the book… But we must not pursue fantasies. Let us try, rather, to remember what Severinus said to us when he informed us he had found the book…”
“You told him to bring it to you and he said he couldn’t…”
“So he did, and then we were interrupted. Why couldn’t he? A book can be carried. And why did he put on gloves? Is there something in the book’s binding connected with the poison that killed Berengar and Venantius? A mysterious trap, a poisoned tip …”
“A snake!” I said.
“Why not a whale? No, we are indulging in fantasies again. The poison, as we have seen, had to enter the mouth. Besides, Severinus didn’t actually say he couldn’t carry the book. He said he preferred to show it to me here. And then he put on his gloves… So we know this book must be handled with gloves. And that goes for you, too, Benno, if you find it, as you hope to. And since you’re being so helpful, you can help me further. Go up to the scriptorium again and keep an eye on Malachi. Don’t let him out of your sight.”
“I will!” Benno said, and he went out, happy at his mission, it seemed to us.
We could restrain the other monks no longer, and the room was invaded. Mealtime was now past, and Bernard was probably assembling his tribunal in the chapter house.
“There is nothing more to be done here,” William said.
With the infirmary, we abandoned my poor hypothesis, and as we were crossing the vegetable garden I asked William whether he really trusted Benno. “Not entirely,” William said, “but we told him nothing he didn’t already know, and we have made him fear the book. And, finally, in setting him to watch Malachi, we are also setting Malachi to watch him, and Malachi is obviously looking for the book on his own.”
“What did the cellarer want, then?”
“We’ll soon know. Certainly he wanted something, and he wanted it quickly, to avert some danger that was terrifying him. This something must be known to Malachi: otherwise there would be no explanation of Remigio’s desperate plea to him…”
“Anyway, the book has vanished…”
“This is the most unlikely thing,” William said, as we arrived at the chapter house. “If it was there, as Severinus told us it was, either it’s been taken away or it’s there still.”
“And since it isn’t there, someone has taken it away,” I concluded.
“It is also possible that the argument should proceed from another minor premise. Since everything confirms the fact that nobody can have taken it away …”
“Then it should be there still. But it is not there.”
“Just a moment. We say it isn’t there because we didn’t find it. But perhaps we didn’t find it because we haven’t seen it where it was.”
“But we looked everywhere!”
“We looked, but did not see. Or else saw, but did not recognize… Adso, how did Severinus describe that book to us? What words did he use?”
“He said he had found a book that was not one of his, in Greek…”
“No! Now I remember. He said a strange book. Severinus was a man of learning, and for a man of learning a book in Greek is not strange; even if that scholar doesn’t know Greek, he would at least recognize the alphabet. And a scholar wouldn’t call a book in Arabic strange, either, even if he doesn’t know Arabic…” He broke off. “And what was an Arabic book doing in Severinus’s laboratory?”
“But why should he have called an Arabic book strange?”
“This is the problem. If he called it strange it was because it had an unusual appearance, unusual at least for him, who was an herbalist and not a librarian… And in libraries it can happen that several ancient manuscripts are bound together, collecting in one volume various and curious texts, one in Greek, one in Aramaic …”
“… and one in Arabic!” I cried, dazzled by this illumination.
William roughly dragged me out of the narthex and sent me running toward the infirmary. “You Teuton animal, you turnip! You ignoramus! You looked only at the first pages and not at the rest!”
“But, master,” I gasped, “you’re the one who looked at the pages I showed you and said it was Arabic and not Greek!”
“That’s true, Adso, that’s true: I’m the animal. Now hurry! Run!”
We went back to the laboratory, but we had trouble entering, because the novices were carrying out the corpse. Other curious visitors were roaming about the room. William rushed to the table and picked up the volumes, seeking the fatal one, flinging away one after another before the amazed eyes of those present, then opening and reopening them all again. Alas, the Arabic manuscript was no longer there. I remembered it vaguely because of its old cover, not strong, quite worn, with light metal bands.
“Who came in here after I left?” William asked a monk. The monk shrugged: it was clear that everyone and no one had come in.
We tried to consider the possibilities. Malachi? It was possible; he knew what he wanted, had perhaps spied on us, had seen us go out empty-handed, and had come back, sure of himself. Benno? I remembered that when William and I had gibed at each other over the Arabic text, he had laughed. At the time I believed he was laughing at my ignorance, but perhaps he had been laughing at William’s ingenuousness: he knew very well the various guises in which an ancient manuscript could appear, and perhaps he had thought what we did not think immediately but should have thought namely, that Severinus knew no Arabic, and so it was odd that he should keep among his books one he was unable to read. Or was there a third person?
William was deeply humiliated. I tried to comfort him; I told him that for three days he had been looking for a text in Greek and it was natural in the course of his examination for him to discard all books not in Greek. And he answered that it is certainly human to make mistakes, but there are some human beings who make more than others, and they are called fools, and he was one of them, and he wondered whether it was worth the effort to study in Paris and Oxford if one was then incapable of thinking that manuscripts are also bound in groups, a fact even novices know, except stupid ones like me, and a pair of clowns like the two of us would be a great success at fairs, and that was what we should do instead of trying to solve mysteries, especially when we were up against people far more clever than we.
“But there’s no use weeping,” he concluded. “If Malachi took it, he has already replaced it in the library. And we would find it only if we knew how to enter the finis Africae. If Benno took it, he must have assumed that sooner or later I would have the suspicion I did have and would return to the laboratory, or he wouldn’t have acted in such haste. And so he must be hiding, and the one place where he has not hidden surely is the one where we would look for him immediately: namely, his cell. Therefore, let’s go back to the chapter house and see if during the interrogation the cellarer says anything useful. Because, after all, I still don’t see Bernard’s plan clearly; he was seeking his man before the death of Severinus, and for other reasons.”
We went back to the chapter. We would have done better to go to Benno’s cell, because, as we were to learn later, our young friend did not have such a high opinion of William and had not thought he would go back to the laboratory so quickly; so, thinking he was not being sought from that quarter, he had gone straight to his cell to hide the book.
But I will tell of this later. In the meantime dramatic and disturbing events took place, enough to make anyone forget about the mysterious book. And though we did not forget it, we were engaged by other urgent tasks, connected with the mission that William, after all, was supposed to fulfill.
Bernard Gui took his place at the center of the great walnut table in the chapter hall. Beside him a Dominican performed the function of notary, and two prelates of the papal legation sat flanking him, as judges. The cellarer was standing before the table, between two archers.
The abbot turned to William and whispered: “I do not know whether this procedure is legitimate. The Lateran Council of 1215 decreed in its Canon Thirty-seven that a person cannot be summoned to appear before judges whose seat is more than two days’ march from his domicile. Here the situation is perhaps different; it is the judge who has come from a great distance, but …”
“The inquisitor is exempt from all normal jurisdiction,” William said, “and does not have to follow the precepts of ordinary law. He enjoys a special privilege and is not even bound to hear lawyers.”
I looked at the cellarer. Remigio was in wretched shape. He looked around like a frightened animal, as if he recognized the movements and gestures of a liturgy he feared. Now I know he was afraid for two reasons, equally terrifying: one, that he had been caught, to all appearances, in flagrant crime; the other, that the day before, when Bernard had begun his inquiry, collecting rumors and insinuations, Remigio had already been afraid his past would come to light; and his alarm had grown when he saw them arrest Salvatore.
If the hapless Remigio was in the grip of his own fear, Bernard Gui, for his part, knew how to transform his victims’ fear into terror. He did not speak: while all were now expecting him to begin the interrogation, he kept his hands on the papers he had before him, pretending to arrange them, but absently. His gaze was really fixed on the accused, and it was a gaze in which hypocritical indulgence (as if to say: Never fear, you are in the hands of a fraternal assembly that can only want your good) mixed with icy irony (as if to say: You do not yet know what your good is, and I will shortly tell you) and merciless severity (as if to say: But in any case I am your judge here, and you are in my power). All things that the cellarer already knew, but which the judge’s silence and delay served to make him feel more deeply, so that, as he became more and more humiliated, his uneasiness would be transformed into desperation instead of relaxation, and he would belong entirely to the judge, soft wax in his hands.
Finally Bernard broke the silence. He uttered some ritual formulas, told the judges they would now proceed to the interrogation of the defendant with regard to two equally odious crimes, one of which was obvious to all but less deplorable than the other, because the defendant had been surprised in the act of murder when he was actually being sought for the crime of heresy.
It was said. The cellarer hid his face in his hands, which he could move only with difficulty because they were bound in chains. Bernard began the questioning.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Remigio of Varagine. I was born fifty-two years ago, and while still a boy, I entered the convent of the Minorites in Varagine.”
“And how does it happen that today you are found in the order of Saint Benedict?”
“Years ago, when the Pope issued the bull Sancta Romana, because I was afraid of being infected by the heresy of the Fraticelli … though I had never shared their notions … I thought it was better for my sinning soul to escape an atmosphere filled with seductions, and I applied and was received among the monks of this abbey, where for more than eight years I have served as cellarer.”
“You escaped the seductions of heresy,” Bernard mocked, “or, rather, you escaped the investigation of those who had determined to discover the heresy and uproot it, and the good Cluniac monks believed they were performing an act of charity in receiving you and those like you. But changing habit is not enough to erase from the soul the evil of heretical depravity, and so we are here now to find out what lurks in the recesses of your impenitent soul and what you did before arriving at this holy place.”
“My soul is innocent and I do not know what you mean when you speak of heretical depravity,” the cellarer said cautiously.
“You see?” Bernard cried, addressing the other judges. “They’re all alike! When one of them is arrested, he faces judgment as if his conscience were at peace and without remorse. And they do not realize this is the most obvious sign of their guilt, because a righteous man on trial is uneasy! Ask him whether he knows the reason why I had ordered his arrest. Do you know it, Remigio?”
“My lord,” the cellarer replied, “I would be happy to learn it from your lips.”
I was surprised, because it seemed to me the cellarer was answering the ritual questions with equally ritual words, as if he were well versed in the rules of the investigation and its pitfalls and had long been trained to face such an eventuality.
“There,” Bernard cried, “the typical reply of the impenitent heretic! They cover trails like foxes and it is very difficult to catch them out, because their beliefs grant them the right to lie in order to evade due punishment. They recur to tortuous answers, trying to trap the inquisitor, who already has to endure contact with such loathsome people. So then, Remigio, you have never had anything to do with the so-called Fraticelli or Friars of the Poor Life, or the Beghards?”
“I experienced the vicissitudes of the Minorites when there was long debate about poverty, but I have never belonged to the sect of the Beghards!”
“You see?” Bernard said. “He denies ever having been a Beghard, because the Beghards, though they share the heresy of the Fraticelli, consider the latter a dead branch of the Franciscan order and consider themselves more pure and perfect. But much of the behavior of one group is like that of the others. Can you deny, Remigio, that you have been seen in church, huddled down with your face against the wall, or prostrate with your hood over your head, instead of kneeling with folded hands like other men?”
“Also in the order of Saint Benedict the monks prostrate themselves, at the proper times…”
“I am not asking what you did at the proper times, but at the improper ones! So do not deny that you assumed one posture or the other, typical of the Beghards! But you are not a Beghard, you say… Tell me, then: what do you believe?”
“My lord, I believe everything a good Christian should…”
“A holy reply! And what does a good Christian believe?”
“What the holy church teaches.”
“And which holy church? The church that is so considered by those believers who call themselves perfect, the Pseudo Apostles, the heretical Fraticelli, or the church they compare to the whore of Babylon, in which all of us devoutly believe?”
“My lord,” the cellarer said, bewildered, “tell me which you believe is the true church…”
“I believe it is the Roman church, one, holy, and apostolic, governed by the Pope and his bishops.”
“So I believe,” the cellarer said.
“Admirable shrewdness!” the inquisitor cried. “Admirable cleverness de dicto! You all heard him: he means to say he believes that I believe in this church, and he evades the requirement of saying what he believes in! But we know well these weasel tricks! Let us come to the point. Do you believe that the sacraments were instituted by our Lord, that to do true penance you must confess to the servants of God, that the Roman church has the power to loosen and to bind on this earth that which will be bound and loosened in heaven?”
“Should I not believe that?”
“I did not ask what you should believe, but what you do believe!”
“I believe everything that you and the other good doctors command me to believe,” the frightened cellarer said.
“Ah! But are not the good doctors you mention perhaps those who command your sect? Is this what you meant when you spoke of the good doctors? Are these perverse liars the men you follow in recognizing your articles of faith? You imply that if I believe what they believe, then you will believe me; otherwise you will believe only them!”
“I did not say that, my lord,” the cellarer stammered. “You are making me say it. I believe you, if you teach me what is good.”
“Oh, what impudence!” Bernard shouted, slamming his fist on the table. “You repeat from memory with grim obstinacy the formula they teach in your sect. You say you will believe me only if I preach what your sect considers good. Thus the Pseudo Apostles have always answered and thus you answer now, perhaps without realizing it, because from your lips again the words emerge that you were once trained for deceiving inquisitors. And so you are accusing yourself with your own words, and I would fall into your trap only if I had not had a long experience of inquisition… But let us come to the real question, perverse man! Have you ever heard of Gherardo Segarelli of Parma?”
“I have heard him spoken of,” the cellarer said, turning pale,, if one could still speak of pallor on that destroyed face.
“Have you ever heard of Fra Dolcino of Novara?”
“I have heard him spoken of.”
“Have you ever seen him in person and had conversation with him?”
The cellarer remained silent for a few moments, as if to gauge how far he should go in telling a part of the truth. Then he made up his mind and said’ in a faint voice, “I have seen him and spoken with him.”
“Louder!” Bernard shouted. “Let a word of truth finally be heard escaping your lips! When did you speak with him?”
“My lord,” the cellarer said, “I was a monk in a convent near Novara when Dolcino’s people gathered in those parts, and they even went past my convent, and at first no one knew clearly who they were…”
“You lie! How could a Franciscan of Varagine be in a convent in the Novara region? You were not in a convent, you were already a member of a band of Fraticelli roaming around those lands and living on alms, and then you joined the Dolcinians!”
“How can you assert that, sir?” the cellarer asked, trembling.
“I will tell you how I can, indeed I must, assert it,” Bernard said, and he ordered Salvatore to be brought in.
The sight of the wretch, who had certainly spent the night under his own interrogation, not public and more severe than this one, moved me to pity. Salvatore’s face, as I have said, was horrible normally, but that morning it was more bestial than ever. And though it showed no signs of violence, the way his chained body moved, the limbs disjointed, almost incapable of walking, the way he was dragged by the archers like a monkey tied to a rope, revealed very clearly how his ghastly questioning must have proceeded.
“Bernard has tortured him …” I murmured to William.
“Not at all,” William answered. “An inquisitor never tortures. The custody of the defendant’s body is always entrusted to the secular arm.”
“But it’s the same thing!” I said.
“Not in the least. It isn’t the same thing for the inquisitor, whose hands remain clean, or for the accused, who, when the inquisitor arrives, suddenly finds support in him, an easing of his sufferings, and so he opens his heart.”
I looked at my master. “You’re jesting,” I said, aghast.
“Do these seem things to jest about?” William replied.
Bernard was now questioning Salvatore, and my pen cannot transcribe the man’s broken words — if it were possible, more Babelish than ever, as he answered, unmanned, reduced to the state of a baboon, while all understood him only with difficulty. Guided by Bernard, who asked the questions in such a way that he could reply only yes or no, Salvatore was unable to tell any lies. And what Salvatore said my reader can easily imagine. He told, or confirmed that he had told during the night, a part of that story I had already pieced together: his wanderings as a Fraticello, Shepherd, and Pseudo Apostle; and how in the days of Fra Dolcino he met Remigio among the Dolcinians and escaped with him, following the Battle of Monte Rebello, taking refuge after various ups and downs in the Casale convent. Further, he added that the heresiarch Dolcino, near defeat and capture, had entrusted to Remigio certain letters, to be carried he did not know where or to whom. And Remigio always carried those letters with him, never daring to deliver them, and on his arrival at the abbey, afraid of keeping them on his person but not wanting to destroy them, he entrusted them to the librarian, yes, to Malachi, who was to hide them somewhere in the recesses of the Aedificium.
As Salvatore spoke, the cellarer was looking at him with hatred, and at a certain point he could not restrain himself from shouting, “Snake, lascivious monkey, I was your father, friend, shield, and this is how you repay me!”
Salvatore looked at his protector, now in need of protection, and answered, with an effort, “Lord Remigio, while I could be, I was your man. And you were to me dilectissimo. But you know the chief constable’s family. Qui non habet caballum vadat cum pede…”
“Madman!” Remigio shouted at him again. “Are you hoping to save yourself? You, too, will die as a heretic, you know? Say that you spoke under torture; say you invented it all!”
“What do I know, lord, what all these heresias are called…Patarini, gazzesi, leoniste, arnaldiste, speroniste, circoncisi … I am not homo literatus. I sinned with no malicia, and Signor Bernardo Magnificentissimo knows it, and I am hoping in his indulgencia in nomine patre et filio et spiritis sanctis …”
“We shall be indulgent insofar as our office allows,” the inquisitor said, “and we shall consider with paternal benevolence the good will with which you have opened your spirit. Go now, go and meditate further in your cell, and trust in the mercy of the Lord. Now we must debate a question of quite different import. So, then, Remigio, you were carrying with you some letters from Dolcino, and you gave them to your brother monk who is responsible for the library…”
“That is not true, not true!” the cellarer cried, as if such a defense could still be effective. And, rightly, Bernard interrupted him: “But you are not the one who must confirm this: it is Malachi of Hildesheim.”
He had the librarian called, but Malachi was not among those present. I knew he was either in the scriptorium or near the infirmary, seeking Benno and the book. They went to fetch him, and when he appeared, distraught, trying to look no one in the face, William muttered with dismay, “And now Benno is free to do what he pleases.” But he was mistaken, because I saw Benno’s face peep up over the shoulders of the other monks crowding around the door of the hall, to follow the interrogation. I pointed him out to William. We thought that Benno’s curiosity about what was happening was even stronger than his curiosity about the book. Later we learned that, by then, he had already concluded an ignoble bargain of his own.
Malachi appeared before the judges, his eyes never meeting those of the cellarer.
“Malachi,” Bernard said, “this morning, after Salvatore’s confession during the night, I asked you whether you had received from the defendant here present any letters…”
“Malachi!” the cellarer cried. “You swore you would do nothing to harm me!”
Malachi shifted slightly toward the defendant, to whom his back was turned, and said in a low voice, which I could barely hear, “I did not swear falsely. If I could have done anything to harm you, it was done already. The letters were handed over to Lord Bernard this morning, before you killed Severinus…”
“But you know, you must know. I didn’t kill Severinus! You know because you were there before me!”
“I?” Malachi asked. “I went in there after they discovered you.”
“Be that as it may,” Bernard interrupted, “what were you looking for in Severinus’s laboratory, Remigio?”
The cellarer turned to William with dazed eyes, then looked at Malachi, then at Bernard again. “But this morning I … I heard Brother William here present tell Severinus to guard certain papers … and since last night, since Salvatore was captured, I have been afraid those letters — ”
“Then you know something about those letters!” Bernard cried triumphantly. The cellarer at this point was trapped. He was caught between two necessities: to clear himself of the accusation of heresy, and to dispel the suspicion of murder. He must have decided to face the second accusation — instinctively, because by now he was acting by no rule, and without counsel. “I will talk about the letters later… I will explain … I will tell how they came into my possession… But let me tell what happened this morning. I thought there would be talk of those letters when I saw Salvatore fall into the hands of Lord Bernard; for years the memory of those letters has been tormenting my heart … Then when I heard William and Severinus speaking of some papers … I cannot say … overcome with fear, I thought Malachi had got rid of them and given them to Severinus… I wanted to destroy them and so I went to Severinus… The door was open and Severinus was already dead, I started searching through his things for the letters… I was just afraid…”
William whispered into my ear, “Poor fool, fearing one danger, he has plunged headlong into another…”
“Let us assume that you are telling almost — I say, almost — the truth,” Bernard intervened. “You thought Severinus had the letters and you looked for them in his laboratory. And why did you think he had them? Why did you first kill the other brothers? Did you perhaps think those letters had for some time been passing through many hands? Is it perhaps customary in this abbey to gather relics of burned heretics?”
I saw the abbot start. Nothing could be more insidious than an accusation of collecting relics of heretics, and Bernard was very sly in mixing the murders with heresy, and every thing with the life of the abbey. I was interrupted in my reflections by the cellarer, who was shouting that he had nothing to do with the other crimes. Bernard indulgently calmed him: this, for the moment, was not the question they were discussing, Remigio was being interrogated for a crime of heresy, and he should not attempt (and here Bernard’s voice became stern) to draw attention away from his heretical past by speaking of Severinus or trying to cast suspicion on Malachi. So he should therefore return to the letters.
“Malachi of Hildesheim,” he said, addressing the witness. “You are not here as a defendant. This morning you answered my questions and my request with no attempt to hide anything. Now you will repeat here what you said to me this morning, and you will have nothing to fear.”
“I repeat what I said this morning,” Malachi said. “A short time after Remigio arrived up here, he began to take charge of the kitchen, and we met frequently for reasons connected with our duties — as librarian, I am charged with shutting up the whole Aedificium at night, and therefore also the kitchen. I have no reason to deny that we became close friends, nor had I any reason to harbor suspicions of this man. He told me that he had with him some documents of a secret nature, entrusted to him in confession, which should not fall into profane hands and which he dared not keep himself. Since I was in charge of the only part of the monastery forbidden to all the others, he asked me to keep those papers, far from any curious gaze, and I consented, never suspecting the documents were of a heretical nature, nor did I even read them as I placed them … I placed them in the most inaccessible of the secret rooms of the library, and after that I forgot this matter, until this morning, when the lord inquisitor mentioned the papers to me, and then I fetched them and handed them over to him…”
The abbot, frowning, took the floor. “Why did you not inform me of this agreement of yours with the cellarer? The library is not intended to house things belonging to the monks!” The abbot had made it clear that the abbey had no connection with this business.
“My lord,” Malachi answered, confused, “it seemed to me a thing of scarce importance. I sinned without malice.”
“Of course, of course,” Bernard said, in a cordial tone, “we are all convinced the librarian acted in good faith, and his frankness in collaborating with this court is proof. I fraternally beg Your Magnificence not to chastise him for this imprudent act of the past. We believe Malachi. And we ask him only to confirm now, under oath, that the papers I will now show him are those he gave me this morning and are those that Remigio of Varagine consigned to him years ago, after his arrival at the abbey.” He displayed two parchments among the papers lying on the table. Malachi looked at them and said in a firm voice, “I swear by God the Father Almighty, by the most holy Virgin, and by all the saints that so it is and so it was.”
“That is enough for me,” Bernard said. “You may go, Malachi of Hildesheim.”
Just before Malachi reached the door, his head bowed, a voice was heard from the curious crowd packed at the rear of the hall: “You hid his letters and he showed you the novices’ asses in the kitchen!” There was some scattered laughter, and Malachi hurried out, pushing others aside left and right. I could have sworn the voice was Aymaro’s, but the words had been shouted in falsetto. The abbot, his face purple, shouted for silence and threatened terrible punishments for all, commanding the monks to clear the hall. Bernard smiled treacherously; Cardinal Bertrand, at one side of the hall, bent to the ear of Jean d’Anneaux and said something to him. The other man reacted by covering his mouth with his hand and bowing his head as if he were coughing. William said to me, “The cellarer was not only a carnal sinner for his own purposes; he also acted as procurer. But Bernard cares nothing about that, except that it embarrasses Abo, the imperial mediator…”
He was interrupted by Bernard, who now spoke straight to him. “I would also be interested to know from you, Brother William, what papers you were talking about this morning with Severinus, when the cellarer overheard you and misunderstood.”
William returned his gaze. “He did misunderstand me, in fact. We were referring to a copy of the treatise on canine hydrophobia by Ayyub al-Ruhawi, a remarkably erudite book that you must surely know of by reputation, and which must often have been of great use to you. Hydrophobia, Ayyub says, may be recognized by twenty-five evident signs…”
Bernard, who belonged to the order of the Dominicans, the Domini canes, the Lord’s dogs, did not consider it opportune to start another battle. “So the matters were extraneous to the case under discussion,” he said rapidly. And the trial continued.
“Let us come back to you, Brother Remigio, Minorite, far more dangerous than a hydrophobic dog. If Brother William in these past few days had paid more attention to the drool of heretics than to that of dogs, perhaps he would also have discovered what a viper was nesting in the abbey. Let us go back to these letters. Now, we know for certain that they were in your hands and that you took care to hide them as if they were a most poisonous thing, and that you actually killed” — with a gesture he forestalled an attempt at denial — “and of the killing we will speak later … that you killed, I was saying, so that I would never have them. So you recognize these papers as your possessions?”
The cellarer did not answer, but his silence was sufficiently eloquent. So Bernard insisted: “And what are these papers? They are two pages written in the hand of the heresiarch Dolcino, a few days before his capture. He entrusted them to a disciple who would take them to others of his sect still scattered about Italy. I could read you everything said in them, how Dolcino, fearing his imminent end, entrusts a message of hope — he says to his brethren — in the Devil! He consoles them, and though the dates he announces here do not coincide with those of his previous letters, when for the year 1305 he promised the complete destruction of all priests at the hand of the Emperor Frederick, still, he declares, this destruction was not far off. Once again the heresiarch was lying, because twenty and more years have gone by since that day, and none of his sinful predictions has come true. But it is not the ridiculous presumption of these prophecies that we must discuss but, rather, the fact that Remigio was their bearer. Can you still deny, heretical and impenitent monk, that you had traffic and cohabitation with the sect of the Pseudo Apostles?”
The cellarer at this point could deny no longer. “My lord,” he said, “my youth was filled with the direst errors. When I learned of the preaching of Dolcino, already seduced as I was by the Friars of the Poor Life, I believed in his words and I joined his band. Yes, it is true, I was with them in the regions of Brescia and Bergamo, I was with them at Como and in Valsesia, with them I took refuge on Bald Mountain and in the Rassa Valley, and finally on Monte Rebello. But I never took part in any evil deed, and when they began their sacking and their violence, I still maintained within me the spirit of meekness that was the quality of the sons of Francis, and on Monte Rebello itself I told Dolcino I no longer felt capable of participating in their battle, and he gave me permission to leave, because, he said, he did not want cowards with him, and he asked me only to take those letters for him to Bologna…”
“To whom?” Cardinal Bertrand asked.
“To some sectarians of his, whose names I believe I can remember, and when I remember them, I will tell them to you, my lord,” Remigio hastily affirmed. And he uttered the names of some men that Cardinal Bertrand seemed to know, because he smiled with a contented look, exchanging a nod of approval with Bernard.
“Very well,” Bernard said, and he made a note of those names. Then he asked Remigio, “And why are you now handing your friends over to us?”
“They are not friends of mine, my lord, and the proof is that I never delivered the letters. Indeed, I went further, and I will say it now after having tried to forget it for so many years: in order to leave that place without being seized by the Bishop of Vercelli’s army, which was awaiting us on the plain, I managed to get in touch with some of his men, and in exchange for a safe-conduct I told them the passages that were good for attacking Dolcino’s fortifications, so that the success of the church’s troops was in part due to my collaboration…”
“Very interesting. This tells us that you were not only a heretic, but also a coward and a traitor. Which does not alter your situation. just as today you tried to save yourself by accusing Malachi, who had done you a favor, so, then, to save yourself you handed your companions in sin over to the forces of law. But you betrayed their bodies, never their teachings, and you kept those letters as relics, hoping one day to have the courage, and the opportunity without running any risks, to deliver them, to win again the favor of the Pseudo Apostles.”
“No, my lord, no,” the cellarer said, covered with sweat, his hands shaking. “No, I swear to you that …”
“An oath!” Bernard said. “Here is another proof of your guile! You want to swear because you know that I know how Waldensian heretics are prepared to use any duplicity, and even to suffer death, rather than swear! And if fear overcomes them, they pretend to swear and mutter false oaths! But I am well aware you do not belong to the sect of the Poor of Lyons, you wicked fox, and you are trying to convince me you are not what you are not so I will not say you are what you are! You swear, do you? You swear, hoping to be absolved, but I tell you this: a single oath is not enough for me! I can require one, two, three, a hundred, as many as I choose. I know very well that you Pseudo Apostles grant dispensations to those who swear false oaths rather than betray the sect. And so every oath will be further proof of your guilt!”
“But what must I do, then?” the cellarer shouted, falling to his knees.
“Do not prostrate yourself like a Beghard! You must do nothing. At this point, only I know what must be done,” Bernard said, with a terrible smile. “You must only confess. And you will be damned and condemned if you confess, and damned and condemned if you do not confess, because you will be punished as a perjurer! So confess, then, if only to shorten this most painful interrogation, which distresses our consciences and our sense of meekness and compassion!”
“But what must I confess?”
“Two orders of sins: That you were in the sect of Dolcino, that you shared, its heretical notions, and its actions and its offenses to the dignity of the bishops and the city magistrates, that you impenitently continue in those lies and illusions, even though the heresiarch is dead and the sect has been dispersed, though not entirely extirpated and destroyed. And that, corrupted in your innermost spirit by the practices learned among the foul sect, you are guilty of the disorders against God and man perpetrated in this abbey, for reasons that still elude me but which need not even be totally clarified, once it has been luminously demonstrated (as we are doing) that the heresy of those who preached and preach poverty, against the teachings of the lord Pope and his bulls, can only lead to criminal acts. This is what the faithful must learn, and this will be enough for me. Confess.”
What Bernard wanted was clear. Without the slightest interest in knowing who had killed the other monks, he wanted only to show that Remigio somehow shared the ideas propounded by the Emperor’s theologians. And once he had shown the connection between those ideas, which were also those of the chapter of Perugia, and the ideas of the Fraticelli and the Dolcinians, and had shown that one man in that abbey subscribed to all those heresies and had been the author of many crimes, he would thus have dealt a truly mortal blow to his adversaries. I looked at William and saw that he had understood but could do nothing, even though he had foreseen it all. I looked at the abbot and saw his face was grim: he was realizing, belatedly, that he, too, had been drawn into a trap, and that his own authority as mediator was crumbling, now that he was going to appear to be lord of a place where all the evils of the century had chosen to assemble. As for the cellarer, by now he no longer knew of what crime he might still try to proclaim his innocence. But perhaps at that moment he was incapable of any calculation; the cry that escaped his throat was the cry of his soul, and in it and with it he was releasing years of long and secret remorse. Or, rather, after a life of uncertainties, enthusiasms, and disappointments, cowardice and betrayal, faced with the ineluctability of his ruin, he decided to profess the faith of his youth, no longer asking himself whether it was right or wrong; but as if to prove to himself that he was capable of some faith.
“Yes, it is true,” he shouted, “I was with Dolcino, and I shared in his crimes, his license; perhaps I was mad, I confused the love of our Lord Jesus Christ with the need for freedom and with hatred of bishops. It is true that I have sinned, but I am innocent of everything that has happened in the abbey, I swear!”
“For the present we have achieved something,” Bernard said, “since you admit having practiced the heresy of the Dolcinians, the witch Margaret, and her companions. Do you admit being with them near Trivero, when they hanged many faithful Christians, including an innocent child of ten? And when they hanged other men in the presence of their wives and parents because they would not submit to the whim of those dogs? Because, by then, blinded by your fury and pride, you thought no one could be saved unless he belonged to your community? Speak!”
“Yes, I believed those things and did those things!”
“And you were present when they captured some followers of the bishops and starved some to death in prison, and they cut off the arm and the hand of a woman with child, leaving her then to give birth to a baby who immediately died, unbaptized? And you were with them when they set fire and razed to the ground the villages of Mosso, Trivero, Cossila, and Clecchia, and many other localities in the zone of Crepacorio, and many houses of Mortiliano and Quorino, and they burned the church in Trivero after befouling the sacred images, tearing tombstones from the altars, breaking an arm of the statue of the Virgin, looting the chalices and vessels and books, destroying the spire, shattering the bells, seizing all the vessels of the confraternity and the possessions of the priest?”
“Yes, yes, I was there, and none of us knew what we were doing by then, we wanted to herald the moment of punishment, we were the vanguard of the Emperor sent by heaven and the holy Pope, we were to hasten the descent of the angel of Philadelphia, when all would receive the grace of the Holy Spirit and the church would be renewed, and after the destruction of all the perverse, only the perfect would reign!”
The cellarer seemed at once possessed and illuminated, the dam of silence and simulation now seemed broken, his past was returning not only in words but also in images, and he was feeling again the emotions that at one time had exalted him.
“So,” Bernard resumed, “you confess that you have revered Gherardo Segarelli as a martyr, that you have denied all power to the Roman church and declared that neither the Pope nor any authority could ordain for you a life different from the one your people led, that no one had the right to excommunicate you, that since the time of Saint Sylvester all the prelates of the church had been prevaricators and seducers except Peter of Morrone, that laymen are not required to pay tithes to priests who do not practice a condition of absolute perfection and poverty as the first apostles practiced, that tithes therefore should be paid to your sect alone, who are the only apostles and paupers of Christ, that to pray to God in a stable or in a consecrated church is the same thing; you also confess that you went through villages and seduced people crying ‘Penitenziagite,’ that you treacherously sang the ‘Salve Regina’ to draw crowds, and you passed yourselves off as penitents leading a perfect life before the eyes of the world and then allowed yourselves every license and every lustfulness because you did not believe in the sacrament of matrimony or in any other sacrament, and, deeming yourselves purer than anyone else, you could allow yourselves every filthiness and every offense to your bodies and the bodies of others? Speak!”
“Yes, yes, I confess the true faith which I then believed with my whole soul, I confess that we took off our garments in sign of renunciation, that we renounced all our belongings while you, race of dogs, will never renounce anything; and from that time on we never accepted money from anyone or carried any about our persons, and we lived on alms and we saved nothing for the morrow, and when they received us and set a table for us, we ate and went away, leaving on the table anything that remained…”
“And you burned and looted to seize the possessions of good Christians!”
“And we burned and looted because we had proclaimed poverty the universal law, and we had the right to appropriate the illegitimate riches of others, and we wanted to strike at the heart of the network of greed that extended from parish to parish, but we never looted in order to possess, or killed in order to loot; we killed to punish, to purify the impure through blood. Perhaps we were driven by an overweening. desire for justice: a man can sin also through overweening love of God, through superabundance of perfection. We were the true spiritual congregation sent by the Lord and destined for the glory of the last days; we sought our reward in paradise, hastening the time of your destruction. We alone were the apostles of Christ, all the others had betrayed him, and Gherardo Segarelli had been a divine plant, planta Dei pullulans in radice fidei; our Rule came to us directly from God. We had to kill the innocent as well, in order to kill all of you more quickly. We wanted a better world, of peace and sweetness and happiness for all, we wanted to kill the war that you brought on with your greed, because you reproached us when, to establish justice and happiness, we had to shed a little blood… The fact is … the fact is that it did not take much, the hastening, and it was worth turning the waters of the Carnasco red that day at Stavello, there was our own blood, too, we did not spare ourselves, our blood and your blood, much of it, at once, immediately, the times of Dolcino’s prophecy were at hand, we had to hasten the course of events…”
His whole body trembling, he rubbed his hands over his habit as if he wanted to cleanse them of the blood he was recalling. “The glutton has become pure again,” William said to me.
“But is this purity?” I asked, horrified.
“There must be some other kind as well,” William said, “but, however it is, it always frightens me.”
“What terrifies you most in purity?” I asked.
“Haste,” William answered.
“Enough, enough,” Bernard was saying now. “We sought a confession from you, not a summons to massacre. Very well, not only have you been a heretic: you are one still. Not only have you been a murderer: you have murdered again. Now tell us how you killed your brothers in this abbey, and why.”
The cellarer stopped trembling, looked around as if he were coming out of a dream. “No,” he said, “I have nothing to do with the crimes in the abbey. I have confessed everything I did: do not make me confess what I have not done…”
“But what remains that you cannot have done? Do you now say you are innocent? O lamb, O model of meekness! You have heard him: he once had his hands steeped in blood and now he is innocent! Perhaps we were mistaken, Remigio of Varagine is a paragon of virtue, a loyal son of the church, an enemy of the enemies of Christ, he has always respected the order that the hand of the church has toiled to impose on villages and cities, the peace of trade, the craftsmen’s shops, the treasures of the churches. He is innocent, he has committed nothing. Here, come to my arms, Brother Remigio, that I may console you for the accusations that evil men have brought against you!” And as Remigio looked at him with dazed eyes, as if he were all of a sudden believing in a final absolution, Bernard resumed his demeanor and addressed the captain of the archers in a tone of command:
“It revolts me to have recourse to measures the church has always criticized when they are employed by the secular arm. But there is a law that governs and directs even my personal feelings. Ask the abbot to provide a place where the instruments of torture can be installed. But do not proceed at once. For three days let him remain in a cell, with his hands and feet in irons. Then have the instruments shown him. Only shown. And then, on the fourth day, proceed. justice is not inspired by haste, as the Pseudo Apostles believe, and the justice of God has centuries at its disposal. Proceed slowly, and by degrees. And, above all, remember what has been said again and again: avoid mutilations and the risk of death. One of the benefits this procedure grants the criminal is precisely that death be savored and expected, but it must not come before confession is full, and voluntary, and purifying.”
The archers bent to lift the cellarer, but he planted his feet on the ground and put up resistance, indicating he wanted to speak. Given leave, he spoke, but the words could hardly come from his mouth, and his speech was like a drunkard’s mumbling, and there was something obscene about it. Only gradually did he regain that kind of savage energy that had marked his confession a moment before.
“No, my lord. No, not torture. I am a cowardly man. I betrayed then, I denied for eleven years in this monastery my past faith, collecting tithes from vinedressers and peasants, inspecting stables and sties so that they would flourish and enrich the abbot; I have collaborated readily in the management of this estate of the Antichrist. And I was well off, I had forgotten my days of revolt, I wallowed in the pleasures of the palate and in others as well. I am a coward. Today I sold my former brothers of Bologna, then I sold Dolcino. And as a coward, disguised as one of the men of the crusade, I witnessed the capture of Dolcino and Margaret, when on Holy Saturday they were taken in the castle of Bugello. I wandered around Vercelli for three months until Pope Clement’s letter arrived with the death sentence. And I saw Margaret cut to pieces before Dolcino’s eyes, and she screamed, disemboweled as she was, poor body that I, too, had touched one night… And as her lacerated body was burning, they fell on Dolcino and pulled off his nose and his testicles with burning tongs, and it is not true what they said afterward, that he did not utter even a moan. Dolcino was tall and strong, he had a great devil’s beard and red hair that fell in curls to his shoulder blades, he was handsome and powerful when he led us, in his broad-brimmed hat with a plume, with his sword girded over his habit. Dolcino made men fear and women cry out with pleasure… But when they tortured him he, too, cried, in pain, like a woman, like a calf, he was bleeding from all his wounds as they carried him from one corner to another, and they continued to wound him slightly, to show how long an emissary of the Devil could live, and he wanted to die, he asked them to finish him, but he died too late, after he reached the pyre and was only a mass of bleeding flesh. I followed him and I congratulated myself on having escaped that trial, I was proud of my cleverness, and that rogue Salvatore was with me, and he said to me: How wise we were, Brother Remigio, to act like sensible men, there is nothing nastier than torture! I would have foresworn a thousand religions that day. And for years, many years, I have told myself how base I was, and how happy I was to be base, and yet I was always hoping that I could demonstrate to myself that I was not such a coward. Today you have given me this strength, Lord Bernard; you have been for me what the pagan emperors were for the most cowardly of the martyrs. You have given me the courage to confess what I believe in my soul, as my body falls away from it. But do not demand too much courage of me, more than this mortal frame can bear. No, not torture. I will say whatever you want. Better the stake at once: you die of suffocation before you burn. Not torture, like Dolcino’s. No. You want a corpse, and to have it you need me to assume the guilt for other corpses. I will be a corpse soon in any case. And so I will give you what you want. I killed Adelmo of Otranto out of hatred for his youth and for his wit in taunting monsters like me, old, fat, squat, and ignorant. I killed Venantius of Salvemec because he was too learned and read books I did not understand. I killed Berengar of Arundel out of hatred of his library, I, who studied theology by clubbing priests that were too fat. I killed Severinus of Sankt Wendel … why? Because he gathered herbs, I, who was on Monte Rebello, where we ate herbs and grasses without wondering about their properties. In truth, I could also kill the others, including our abbot: with the Pope or with the empire, he still belongs to my enemies, and I have always hated him, even when he fed me because I fed him. Is that enough for you? Ah, no, you also want to know how I killed all those people… Why, I killed them … let me see … by calling up the infernal powers, with the help of a thousand legions brought under my command by the art that Salvatore taught me. To kill someone it is not necessary to strike: the Devil does it for you, if you know how to command the Devil.”
He gave the onlookers a sly glance, laughing. But by now it was the laughter of a madman, even if, as William pointed out to me afterward, this madman was clever enough to drag Salvatore down with him also, to avenge his betrayal.
“And how could you command the Devil?” Bernard insisted, taking this delirium as a legitimate confession.
“You yourself know: it is impossible to traffic for so many years with the possessed and not wear their habit! You yourself know, butcher of apostles! You take a black cat — isn’t that it? — that does not have even one white hair (you know this), and you bind his four paws, and then you take him at midnight to a crossroads and you cry in a loud voice: O great Lucifer, Emperor of Hell, I call you and I introduce you into the body of my enemy just as I now hold prisoner this cat, and if you will bring my enemy to death, then the following night at midnight, in this same place, I will offer you this cat in sacrifice, and you will do what I command of you by the powers of the magic I now exercise according to the secret book of Saint Cyprian, in the name of all the captains of the great legions of hell, Adramelch, Alastor, and Azazel, to whom now I pray, with all their brothers…” His lip trembled, his eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, and he began to pray — or, rather, he seemed to be praying, but he addressed his implorations to all the chiefs of the infernal legions: “Abigor, pecca pro nobis … Amon, miserere nobis … Samael, libera nos a bono … Belial eleison … Focalor, in corruptionem meam intende … Haborym, damnamus dominum … Zaebos, anum meum aperies … Leonard, asperge me spermate tuo et inquinabor…”
“Stop, stop!” everyone in the hall cried, making the sign of the cross. “O Lord, have mercy on us all!”
The cellarer was now silent. When he had uttered the names of all these devils, he fell face down, a whitish saliva drooling from his twisted mouth and the clenched rows of his teeth. His hands, though tormented by his chains, opened and closed convulsively, his feet kicked the air in irregular fits. Seeing me gripped by a trembling of horror, William put his hand on my head and clasped me almost at the nape, pressing it, which calmed me again. “You see?” he said to me. “Under torture or the threat of torture, a man says not only what he has done but what he would have liked to do even if he didn’t know it. Remigio now wants death with all his soul.”
The archers led the cellarer away, still in convulsions. Bernard, gathered his papers. Then he looked hard at those present, motionless, but in great agitation.
“The interrogation is over. The accused, guilty by his own confession, will be taken to Avignon, where the final trial will be held, as a scrupulous safeguard of truth and justice, and only after that formal trial will he be burned. He no longer belongs to you, Abo, nor does he belong any longer to me, who am only the humble instrument of the truth. The fulfillment of justice will take place elsewhere; the shepherds have done their duty, now the dogs must separate the infected sheep from the flock and purify it with fire. The wretched episode that has seen this man commit such ferocious crimes is ended. Now may the abbey live in peace. But the world” — here he raised his voice and addressed the group of envoys — “the world has still not found peace. The world is riven by heresy, which finds refuge even in the halls of imperial palaces! Let my brothers remember this: a cingulum diaboli binds Dolcino’s perverse sectarians to the honored masters of the chapter of Perugia. We must not forget: in the eyes of God the ravings of the wretch we have just handed over to justice are no different from those of the masters who feast at the table of the excommunicated German of Bavaria. The source of the heretics’ wickedness springs from many preachings, even respected, still unpunished. Hard passion and humble Calvary are the lot of him who has been called by God, like my own sinful person, to distinguish the viper of heresy wherever it may nest. But in carrying out this holy task, we learn that he who openly practices heresy is not the only kind of heretic. Heresy’s supporters can be distinguished by five indicators. First, there are those who visit heretics secretly when they are in prison; second, those who lament their capture and have been their intimate friends (it is, in fact, unlikely that one who has spent much time with a heretic remains ignorant of his activity); third, those who declare the heretics have been unjustly condemned, even when their guilt has been proved; fourth, those who look askance and criticize those who persecute heretics and preach against them successfully, and this can be discovered from the eyes, nose, the expression they try to conceal, showing hatred toward those for whom they feel bitterness and love toward those whose misfortune so grieves them; the fifth sign, finally, is the fact that they collect the charred bones of burned heretics and make them an object of veneration… But I attach great value also to a sixth sign, and I consider open friends of heretics the authors of those books where (even if they do not openly offend orthodoxy) the heretics have found the premises with which to syllogize in their perverse way.”
As he spoke, he was looking at Ubertino. The whole French legation understood exactly what Bernard meant. By now the meeting had failed, and no one would dare repeat the discussion of that morning, knowing that every word would be weighed in the light of these latest, disastrous events. If Bernard had been sent by the Pope to prevent a reconciliation between the two groups, he had succeeded.
As the monks slowly emerged from the chapter house, Michael came over to William, and then both of them were joined by Ubertino. Together we all went out into the open, to confer in the cloister under cover of the fog, which showed no sign of thinning out. Indeed, it was made even thicker by the shadows.
“I don’t think it necessary to comment on what has happened,” William said. “Bernard has defeated us. Don’t ask me whether that imbecile Dolcinian is really guilty of all those crimes. As far as I can tell, he isn’t, not at all. The fact is, we are back where we started. John wants you alone in Avignon, Michael, and this meeting hasn’t given you the guarantees we were looking for. On the contrary, it has given you an idea of how every word of yours, up there, could be distorted. Whence we must deduce, it seems to me, that you should not go.”
Michael shook his head. “I will go, on the contrary. I do not want a schism. You, William, spoke very clearly today, and you said what you would like. Well, that is not what I want, and I realize that the decisions of the Perugia chapter have been used by the imperial theologians beyond our intentions. I want the Franciscan order to be accepted by the Pope with its ideal of poverty. And the Pope must understand that unless the order confirms the ideal of poverty, it will never be possible for it to recover the heretical offshoots. I will go to Avignon, and if necessary I will make an act of submission to John. I will compromise on everything except the principle of poverty.”
Ubertino spoke up. “You know you are risking your life?”
“So be it,” Michael answered. “Better than risking my soul.”
He did seriously risk his life, and if John was right (as I still do not believe), Michael also lost his soul. As everyone knows by now, Michael went to the Pope a week after the events I am narrating. He held out against him for four months, until in April of the following year John convened a consistory in which he called Michael a madman, a reckless, stubborn, tyrannical fomenter of heresy, a viper nourished in the very bosom of the church. And one might think that, according to his way of seeing things, John was right, because during those four months Michael had become a friend of my master’s friend, the other William, the one from Occam, and had come to share his ideas — more extreme, but not very different from those my master shared with Marsilius and had expounded that morning. The life of these dissidents became precarious in Avignon, and at the end of May, Michael, William of Occam, Bonagratia of Bergamo, Francis of Ascoli, and Henri de Talheim took flight, pursued, by the Pope’s men to Nice, then Toulon, Marseilles, and Aigues-Mortes, where they were overtaken by Cardinal Pierre de Arrablay, who tried to persuade them to go back but was unable to overcome their resistance, their hatred of the Pontiff, their fear. In June they reached Pisa, where they were received in triumph by the imperial forces, and in the following months Michael was to denounce John publicly. Too late, by then. The Emperor’s fortunes were ebbing; from Avignon John was plotting to give the Minorites a new superior general, and he finally achieved victory. Michael would have done better not to decide that day to go to the Pope: he could have led the Minorites’ resistance more closely, without wasting so many months in his enemy’s power, weakening his own position… But perhaps divine omnipotence had so ordained things — nor do I know now who among them all was in the right. After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?
But I am straying into melancholy digressions. I must tell instead of the end of that sad conversation. Michael had made up his mind, and there was no way of convincing him to desist. But another problem arose, and William announced it without mincing words: Ubertino himself was no longer safe. The words Bernard had addressed to him, the hatred the Pope now felt toward him, the fact that, whereas Michael still represented a power with which to negotiate, Ubertino was a party unto himself at this point …
“John wants Michael at court and Ubertino in hell. If I know Bernard, before tomorrow is over, with the complicity of the fog, Ubertino will have been killed. And if anyone asks who did it, the abbey can easily bear another crime, and they will say it was done by devils summoned by Remigio and his black cats, or by some surviving Dolcinian still lurking inside these walls…”
Ubertino was worried. “Then —?” he asked.
“Then,” William said, “go and speak with the abbot. Ask him for a mount, some provisions, and a letter to some distant abbey, beyond the Alps. And take advantage of the darkness and the fog to leave at once.”
“But are the archers not still guarding the gates?”
“The abbey has other exits, and the abbot knows them. A servant has only to be waiting for you at one of the lower curves with a horse; and after slipping through some passage in the walls, you will have only to go through a stretch of woods. You must act immediately, before Bernard recovers from the ecstasy of his triumph. I must concern myself with something else. I had two missions: one has failed, at least the other must succeed. I want to get my hands on a book, and on a man. If all goes well, you will be out of here before I seek you again. So farewell, then.” He opened his arms. Moved, Ubertino held him in a close embrace: “Farewell, William. You are a mad and arrogant Englishman, but you have a great heart. Will we meet again?”
“We will meet again,” William assured him. “God will wish it.”
God, however, did not wish it. As I have already said, Ubertino died, mysteriously killed, two years later. A hard and adventurous life, the life of this mettlesome and ardent old man. Perhaps he was not a saint, but I hope God rewarded his adamantine certainty of being one. The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God’s will, the less I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do; and as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions. And Ubertino surely had great faith in the blood and agony of our Lord Crucified.
Perhaps I was thinking these things even then, and the old mystic realized it, or guessed that I would think them one day. He smiled at me sweetly and embraced me, without the intensity with which he had sometimes gripped me in the preceding days. He embraced me as a grandfather embraces his grandson, and in the same spirit I returned the embrace. Then he went off with Michael to seek the abbot.
“And now?” I asked William.
“And now, back to our crimes.”
“Master,” I said, “today many things happened, grave things for Christianity, and our mission has failed. And yet you seem more interested in solving this mystery than in the conflict between the Pope and the Emperor.”
“Madmen and children always speak the truth, Adso. It may be that, as imperial adviser, my friend Marsilius is better than I, but as inquisitor I am better. Even better than Bernard Gui, God forgive me. Because Bernard is interested, not in discovering the guilty, but in burning the accused. And I, on the contrary, find the most joyful delight in unraveling a nice, complicated knot. And it must also be because, at a time when as philosopher, I doubt the world has an order, I am consoled to discover, if not an order, at least a series of connections in small areas of the world’s affairs. Finally, there is probably another reason: in this story things greater and more important than the battle between John and Louis may be at stake…”
“But it is a story of theft and vengeance among monks of scant virtue!” I cried, dubiously.
“Because of a forbidden book, Adso. A forbidden book!” William replied.
By now the monks were heading for supper. Our meal was half over when Michael of Cesena sat down beside us and told us Ubertino had left. William heaved a sigh of relief.
At the end of the meal, we avoided the abbot, who was conversing with Bernard, and noted Benno, who greeted us with a half smile as he tried to follow the door. William overtook him and forced him to follow us to a corner of the kitchen.
“Benno,” William asked him, “where is the book?”
“What book?”
“Benno, neither of us is a fool. I am speaking of the book we were hunting for today in Severinus’s laboratory, which I did not recognize. But you recognized it very well and went back to get it…”
“What makes you think I took it?”
“I think you did, and you think the same. Where is it?”
“I cannot tell.”
“Benno, if you refuse to tell me, I will speak with the abbot.”
“I cannot tell by order of the abbot,” Benno said, with a virtuous air. “Today, after we saw each other, something happened that you should know about. On Berengar’s death there was no assistant librarian. This afternoon Malachi proposed me for the position. Just half an hour ago the abbot agreed, and tomorrow morning, I hope, I will be initiated into the secrets of the library. True, I did take the book this morning, and I hid it in the pallet in my cell without even looking at it, because I knew Malachi was keeping an eye on me. Eventually Malachi made me the proposal I told you. And then I did what an assistant librarian must do: I handed the book over to him.”
I could not refrain from speaking out, and violently.
“But, Benno, yesterday and the day before you … you said you were burning with the curiosity to know, you didn’t want the library to conceal mysteries any longer, you said a scholar must know…”
Benno was silent, blushing; but William stopped me: “Adso, a few hours ago Benno joined the other side. Now he is the guardian of those secrets he wanted to know, and while he guards them he will have all the time he wants to learn them.”
“But the others?” I asked. “Benno was speaking also in the name of all men of learning!”
“Before,” William said. And he drew me away, leaving Benno the prey of confusion.
“Benno,” William then said to me, “is the victim of a great lust, which is not that of Berengar or that of the cellarer. Like many scholars, he has a lust for knowledge. Knowledge for its own sake. Barred from a part of this knowledge, he wanted to seize it. Now he has it. Malachi knew his man: he used the best means to recover the book and seal Benno’s lips. You will ask me what is the good of controlling such a hoard of learning if one has agreed not to put it at the disposal of everyone else. But this is exactly why I speak of lust. Roger Bacon’s thirst for knowledge was not lust: he wanted to employ his learning to make God’s people happier, and so he did not seek knowledge for its own sake. Benno’s is merely insatiable curiosity, intellectual pride, another way for a monk to transform and allay the desires of his loins, or the ardor that makes another man a warrior of the faith or of heresy. There is lust not only of the flesh. Bernard Gui is lustful; his is a distorted lust for justice that becomes identified with a lust for power. Our holy and no longer Roman Pontiff lusts for riches. And the cellarer as a youth had a lust to testify and transform and do penance, and then a lust for death. And Benno’s lust is for books. Like all lusts, including that of Onan, who spilled his seed on the ground, it is sterile and has nothing to do with love, not even carnal love…”
“I know,” I murmured, despite myself. William pretended not to hear. Continuing his observations, he said, “True love wants the good of the beloved.”
“Can it be that Benno wants the good of his books (and now they are also his) and thinks their good lies in their being kept far from grasping hands?” I asked.
“The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them. This is why it has become a sink of iniquity. The cellarer says he betrayed. So has Benno. He has betrayed. Oh, what a nasty day, my good Adso! Full of blood and ruination. I have had enough of this day. Let us also go to compline, and then to bed.”
Coming out of the kitchen, we encountered Aymaro. He asked us whether the rumor going around was true, that Malachi had proposed Benno as his assistant. We could only confirm it.
“Our Malachi has accomplished many fine things today,” Aymaro said, with his usual sneer of contempt and indulgence. If justice existed, the Devil would come and take him this very night.”
Vespers had been sung in a confused fashion while the interrogation of the cellarer was still under way, with the curious novices escaping their master’s control to observe through windows and cracks what was going on in the chapter hall. Now the whole community was to pray for the good soul of Severinus. Everyone expected the abbot to speak, and wondered what he would say. But instead, after the ritual homily of Saint Gregory, the responsory, and the three prescribed psalms, the abbot did step into the pulpit, but only to say he would remain silent this evening. Too many calamities had befallen the abbey, he said, to allow even the spiritual father to speak in a tone of reproach and admonition. Everyone, with no exceptions, should now make a strict examination of conscience. But since it was necessary for someone to speak, he suggested the admonition should come from the oldest of their number, now close to death, the brother who was the least involved of all in the terrestrial passions that had generated so many evils. By right of age Alinardo of Grottaferrata should speak, but all knew the fragile condition of the venerable brother’s health. Immediately after Alinardo, in the order established by the inevitable progress of time, came Jorge. And the abbot now called upon him.
We heard a murmuring from the section of the stalls where Aymaro and the other Italians usually sat. I suspected the abbot had entrusted the sermon to Jorge without discussing the matter with Alinardo. My master pointed out to me, in a whisper, that the abbot’s decision not to speak had been wise, because whatever he might have said would have been judged by Bernard and the other Avignonese present. Old Jorge, on the other hand, would confine himself to his usual mystical prophecies, and the Avignonese would not attach much importance to them. “But I will,” William added, “because I don’t believe Jorge agreed, and perhaps asked, to speak without a very precise purpose.”
Jorge climbed into the pulpit, with someone’s help. His face was illuminated by the tripod, which alone lighted the nave. The glow of the flame underlined the darkness shrouding his eyes, which seemed two black holes.
“Most beloved brothers,” he began, “and all of our guests, most dear to us. If you care to listen to this poor old man … The four deaths that have afflicted our abbey — not to mention the sins, remote and recent, of the most abject among the living — are not, as you know, to be attributed to the severity of nature, which, implacable in its rhythms, ordains our earthly day, from cradle to grave. All of you no doubt believe that, though you have been overwhelmed with grief, these sad events have not involved your soul, because all of you, save one, are innocent, and when this one has been punished, while you will, to be sure, continue to mourn the absence of those who have gone, you will not have to clear yourselves of any charge before the tribunal of God. So you believe. Madmen!” he shouted in an awful voice. “Madmen and presumptuous fools that you are! He who has killed will bear before God the burden of his guilt, but only because he agreed to become the vehicle of the decrees of God. Just as it was necessary for someone to betray Jesus in order for the mystery of redemption to be accomplished, yet the Lord sanctioned damnation and vituperation for the one who betrayed him. Thus someone has sinned in these days, bringing death and ruination, but I say to you that this ruination was, if not desired, at least permitted by God for the humbling of our pride!”
He was silent, and turned his blank gaze on the solemn assembly as if his eyes could perceive its emotions, as in fact with his ear he savored the silence and consternation.
“In this community,” he went on, “for some time the serpent of pride has been coiled. But what pride? The pride of power, in a monastery isolated from the world? No, certainly not. The pride of wealth? My brothers, before the known world echoed with long debates about poverty and ownership, from the days of our founder, we, even when we had everything, have never had anything, our one true wealth being the observation of the Rule, prayer, and work. But of our work, the work of our order and in particular the work of this monastery, a part — indeed, the substance — is study, and the preservation of knowledge. Preservation of, I say, not search for, because the property of knowledge, as a divine thing, is that it is complete and has been defined since the beginning, in the perfection of the Word which expresses itself to itself. Preservation, I say, and not search, because it is a property of knowledge, as a human thing, that it has been defined and completed over the course of the centuries, from the preaching of the prophets to the interpretation of the fathers of the church. There is no progress, no revolution of ages, in the history of knowledge, but at most a continuous and sublime recapitulation. Human history proceeds with a motion that cannot be arrested, from the creation through the redemption, toward the return of Christ triumphant, who will appear seated on a cloud to judge the quick and the dead; but human and divine knowledge does not follow this path: steady as a fort that does not cede, it allows us, when we are humble and alert to its voice, to follow, to predict this path, but it is not touched by the path. I am He who is, said the God of the Jews. I am the way, the truth, and the life, said our Lord. “There you have it: knowledge is nothing but the awed comment on these two truths. Everything else that has been said was uttered by the prophets, by the evangelists, by, the fathers and the doctors, to make these two sayings clearer. And sometimes an apposite comment came also from the pagans, who were ignorant of them, and their words have been taken into the Christian tradition. But beyond that there is nothing further to say. There is only to continue meditation, to gloss, preserve. This was and should be the office of our abbey with its splendid library — nothing else. It is said that an Oriental caliph one day set fire to the library of a famous and glorious and proud city, and that, as those thousands of volumes were burning, he said that they could and should disappear: either they were repeating what the Koran already said, and therefore they were useless, or else they contradicted that book sacred to the infidels, and therefore they were harmful: The doctors of the church, and we along with them, did not reason in this way. Everything that involves commentary and clarification of Scripture must be preserved, because it enhances the glory of the divine writings; what contradicts must not be destroyed, because only if we preserve it can it be contradicted in its turn by those who can do so and are so charged, in the ways and times that the Lord chooses. Hence the responsibility of our order through the centuries, and the burden of our abbey today: proud of the truth we proclaim, humble and prudent in preserving those words hostile to the truth, without allowing ourselves to be soiled by them. Now, my brothers, what is the sin of pride that can tempt a scholar-monk? That of considering as his task not preserving but seeking some information not yet vouchsafed mankind, as if the last word had not already resounded in the words of the last angel who speaks in the last book of Scripture: ‘For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.’ There … does it not seem to you, my unfortunate brothers, that these words only adumbrate what has recently happened within these walls, whereas what has happened within these walls adumbrates only the same vicissitude as that afflicting the century in which we live, determined in word and in deed, in cities as in castles, in proud universities and cathedral churches, to seek anxiously to discover new codicils to the words of the truth, distorting the meaning of that truth already rich in all the scholia, and requiring only fearless defense and not foolish increment? This is the pride that lurked and is still lurking within these walls: and I say to him who has labored and labors to break the seals of the books that are not his to see, that it is this pride the Lord wanted to punish and will continue to punish if it is not brought down and does not humble itself, for the Lord has no difficulty in finding, always and still, thanks to our fragility, the instruments of His vengeance.”
“Did you hear that, Adso?” William murmured to me. “The old man knows more than he is saying. Whether or not he had a hand in this business, he knows, and is warning, that if certain curious monks continue violating the library, the abbey will not regain its peace.”
Jorge, after a long pause, now resumed speaking.
“But who, finally, is the very symbol of this pride, of whom the proud are the illustration and messengers, the accomplices and standard-bearers? Who in truth has acted and is perhaps acting also inside these walls, so as to warn us that the time is at hand — and to console us, because if the time is at hand, the sufferings will surely be intolerable, but not infinite, since the great cycle of this universe is about to be fulfilled? Oh, you have all understood very well, and you fear to utter the name, for it is also yours and you are afraid of it, but though you have fear, I shall have none, and I will say this name in a loud voice so that your viscera may twist in fright and your teeth chatter and cut off your tongue, and the chill that forms in your blood make a dark veil descend over your eyes… He is the foul beast, he is the Antichrist!”
He paused for a long time. The listeners seemed dead. The only moving thing in the whole church was the flame in the tripod, but even the shadows it formed seemed to have frozen. The only sound, faint, was Jorge’s gasping, as he wiped the sweat from his brow. Then Jorge went on.
“You would perhaps like to say to me: No, he has not yet come; where are the signs of his coming? Fool who says this! Why, we have them before our eyes, day after day, in the great amphitheater of the world and in the narrower image of the abbey, the premonitory catastrophes… It has been said that when the moment is near, a foreign king will rise in the West, lord of immense deceits, atheist, killer of men, fraudulent, thirsting for gold, skilled in tricks, wicked, enemy and persecutor of the faithful, and in his time he will not hold silver dear but will esteem only gold! I know well, you who listen to me hasten now to make your calculations to see whether he of whom I speak resembles the Pope or the Emperor or the King of France or whomever you will, so that you will be able to say: He is my enemy and I am on the right side! But I am not so ingenuous; I will not single out one man for you. The Antichrist, when he comes, comes in all and for all, and, each is a part of him. He will be in the bands of brigands who sack cities and countryside, he will be in unforeseen signs in the heavens whereby suddenly rainbows will appear, horns and fires, while the moaning of voices will be heard and the sea will boil. It has been said that men and animals will generate monsters, but this means that hearts will conceive hatred and discord. Do not look around you for a glimpse of the animals of the illuminations you so enjoy on parchments! It has been said that young wives not long wed will give birth to babes already able to speak perfectly, who will bring word that the time is at hand and will ask to be killed. But do not search the villages down below us, the too-wise babes have already been killed inside these very walls! And like those babes of the prophecies, they had the appearance of men already old, and in the prophecy they were the quadruped children, and the ghosts, and the embryos that were to prophesy in the mothers’ wombs uttering magic spells. And all has been written, do you know that? It has been written that many will be the agitations among those of rank, and among the peoples, the churches; that wicked shepherds will rise up, perverse, disdainful, greedy, pleasure-seeking, lovers of gain, enjoyers of idle speech, boastful, proud, avid, arrogant, plunged in lewdness, seekers of vainglory, enemies of the Gospel, ready to repudiate the strait gate, to despise the true word; and they will hate every path of piety, they will not repent their sins, and therefore will spread among all peoples disbelief, fraternal hatred, wickedness, hardness of heart, envy, indifference, robbery, drunkenness, intemperance, lasciviousness, carnal pleasure, fornication, and all the other vices. Affliction will vanish, and humility, love of peace, poverty, compassion, the gift of tears… Come, do you not recognize yourselves, all of you here present, monks of this abbey and mighty visitors from the outside world?”
In the pause that followed a rustling was heard. It was Cardinal Bertrand wriggling on his bench. After all, I thought, Jorge was behaving like a great preacher, and as he lashed his brothers he was not sparing the guests, either. I would have given anything to know what was going through Bernard’s mind at that moment, or the minds of the fat Avignonese.
“And it will be at this point, precisely this,” Jorge thundered, “that the Antichrist will have his blasphemous apparition, ape as he wants to be of our Lord. In those times (which are these) all kingdoms will be swept away, there will be famine and poverty, and poor harvests, and winters of exceptional severity. And the children of that time (which is this) will no longer have anyone to administer their goods and preserve food in their storerooms, and they will be harassed in the markets of buying and selling. Blessed, then, are those who will no longer live, or who, living, will be able to survive! Then will come the son of perdition, the enemy who boasts and swells up, displaying many virtues to deceive the whole earth and to prevail over the just. Syria will fall and mourn her sons. Cilicia will raise her head until he who is called to judge her shall appear. The daughter of Babylon will rise from the throne of her splendor to drink from the cup of bitterness. Cappadocia, Lycia, and Lycaonia will bow down, for whole throngs will be destroyed in the corruption of their iniquity. Barbarian camps and war chariots will appear on all sides to occupy the lands. In Armenia, in Pontus, and in Bithynia youths will die by the sword, girl children will be taken prisoner, sons and daughters will commit incest. Pisidia, who boasts in her glory, will be laid prostrate, the sword will pass through the midst of Phoenicia, Judaea will be garbed in mourning and will prepare for the day of perdition brought on by her impurity. On every side will appear abomination and desolation, the Antichrist will defeat the West and will destroy the trade routes; in his hand he will have sword and raging fire, and in violent fury the flame will burn: his strength will be blasphemy, his hand treachery, the right hand will be ruin, the left the bearer of darkness. These are the features that will mark him: his head will be of burning fire, his right eye will be bloodshot, his left eye a feline green with two pupils, and his eyebrows will be white, his lower lip swollen, his ankle weak, his feet big, his thumb crushed and elongated!”
“It seems his own portrait,” William whispered, chuckling. It was a very wicked remark, but I was grateful to him for it, because my hair was beginning to stand on end. I could barely stifle a laugh, my cheeks swelling as my clenched lips let out a puff. A sound that, in the silence following the old man’s words, was clearly audible, but fortunately everyone thought someone was coughing, or weeping, or shuddering; and all of them were right.
“It is the moment,” Jorge was now saying, “when everything will fall into lawlessness, sons will raise their hands against fathers, wives will plot against husbands, husbands will bring wives to law, masters will be inhuman to servants and servants will disobey their masters, there will be no more respect for the old, the young will demand to rule, work will seem a useless chore to all, everywhere songs will rise praising license, vice, dissolute liberty of behavior. And after that, rape, adultery, perjury, sins against nature will follow in a great wave, and disease, and soothsaying, and spells, and flying bodies will appear in the heavens, in the midst of the good Christians false prophets will rise, false apostles, corrupters, impostors, wizards, rapists, usurers, perjurers and falsifiers; the shepherds will turn into wolves, priests will lie, monks will desire things of this world, the poor will not hasten to the aid of their lords, the powerful will be without mercy, the just will bear witness to injustice. All cities will be shaken by earthquakes, there will be pestilence in every land, storm winds will uproot the earth, the fields will be contaminated, the sea will secrete black humors, new and strange wonders will take place upon the moon, the stars will abandon their courses, other stars — unknown — will furrow the sky, it will snow in summer, and in winter the heat will be intense. And the times of the end will have come, and the end of time… On the first day at the third hour in the firmament a great and powerful voice will be raised, a purple cloud will advance from the north, thunder and lightning will follow it, and on the earth a rain of blood will fall. On the second day the earth will be uprooted from its seat and the smoke of a great fire will pass through the gates of the sky. On the third day the abysses of the earth will rumble from the four corners of the cosmos. The pinnacles of the firmament will open, the air will be filled with columns of smoke, and there will be the stench of sulphur until the tenth hour. On the fourth day, early in the morning, the abyss will liquefy and emit explosions, and buildings will collapse. On the fifth day at the sixth hour the powers of light and the wheel of the sun will be destroyed, and there will be darkness over the earth till evening, and the stars and the moon will cease their office. On the sixth day at the fourth hour the firmament will split from east to west and the angels will be able to look down on the earth through the crack in the heavens and all those on earth will be able to see the angels looking down from heaven. Then all men will hide on the mountains to escape the gaze of the just angels. And on the seventh day Christ will arrive in the light of his Father. And there will then be the judgment of the just and their ascent, in the eternal bliss of bodies and souls. But this is not the object of your meditation this evening, proud brothers! It is not sinners who will see the dawn of the eighth day, when a sweet and tender voice will rise from the east, in the midst of the heavens, and that angel will be seen who commands all the other holy angels, and all the angels will advance together with him, seated on a chariot of clouds, filled with joy, speeding through the air, to set free the blessed who have believed, and all together they will rejoice because the destruction of this world will have been consummated! But this is not to make us rejoice proudly this evening! We will meditate instead on the words the Lord will utter to drive from him those who have not earned salvation: Far from me, ye accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for you by the Devil and his ministers) You yourselves have earned it, and now enjoy it! Go ye from me, descending into the eternal darkness and into the unquenchable fire! I made you and you became followers of another! You became servants of another lord, go and dwell with him in the darkness, with him, the serpent who never rests, amid the gnashing of teeth! I gave you ears to hear the Scripture and you listened to the words of pagans! I formed a mouth for you to glorify God, and you used it for the lies of poets and the riddles of buffoons! I gave you eyes to see the light of my precepts, and you used them to peer into the darkness! I am a humane judge, but a just one. To each I shall give what he deserves. I would have mercy on you, but I find no oil in your jars. I would be impelled to take pity, but your lamps are not cleaned. Go from me… Thus will speak the Lord. And they … and perhaps we … will descend into the eternal torment. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
“Amen,” all replied, with one voice.
In a line, without a murmur, the monks went off to their pallets. Feeling no desire to speak with one another, the Minorites and the Pope’s men disappeared, longing for solitude and rest. My heart was heavy.
“To bed, Adso,” William said to me, climbing the stairs of the pilgrims’ hospice. “This is not a night for roaming about. Bernard Gui might have the idea of heralding the end of the world by beginning with our carcasses. Tomorrow we must try to be present at matins, because immediately afterward Michael and the other Minorites will leave.”
“Will Bernard leave, too, with his prisoners?” I asked in a faint voice.
“Surely he has nothing more to do here. He will want to precede Michael to Avignon, but in such a way that Michael’s arrival coincides with the trial of the cellarer, a Minorite, heretic, and murderer. The pyre of the cellarer will illuminate, like a propitiatory torch, Michael’s first meeting with the Pope.”
“And what will become of Salvatore and … the girl?”
“Salvatore will go with the cellarer, because he will have to testify at the trial. Perhaps in exchange for this service Bernard will grant him his life. He may allow him to escape and then have him killed, or he may really let him go, because a man like Salvatore is of no interest to a man like Bernard. Who knows? Perhaps Salvatore will end up a cutthroat bandit in some forest of Languedoc…”
“And the girl?”
“I told you: she is burnt flesh. But she will be burned beforehand, along the way, to the edification of some Catharist village along the coast. I have heard it said that Bernard is to meet his colleague Jacques Fournier (remember that name: for the present he is burning Albigensians, but he has higher ambitions), and a beautiful witch to throw on the fire will increase the prestige and the fame of both…”
“But can nothing be done to save them?” I cried. “Can’t the abbot intervene?”
“For whom? For the cellarer, a confessed criminal? For a wretch like Salvatore? Or are you thinking of the girl?”
“What if I were?” I made bold to say. ‘After all, of the three she is the only truly innocent one: you know she is not a witch…”
“And do you believe that the abbot, after what has happened, wants to risk for a witch what little prestige he has left?”
“But he assumed the responsibility for Ubertino’s escape!”
“Ubertino was one of his monks and was not accused of anything. Besides, what nonsense are you saying? Ubertino is an important man; Bernard could have struck him only from behind.”
“So the cellarer was right: the simple folk always pay for all, even for those who speak in their favor, even for those like Ubertino and Michael, who with their words of penance have driven the simple to rebel!” I was in such despair that I did not consider that the girl was not even a Fraticello, seduced by Ubertino’s mystical vision, but a peasant, paying for something that did not concern her.
“So it is,” William answered me sadly. “And if you are really seeking a glimmer of justice, I will tell you that one day the big dogs, the Pope and the Emperor, in order to make peace, will pass over the corpses of the smaller dogs who bit one another in their service. And Michael or Ubertino will be treated as your girl is being treated today.”
Now I know that William was prophesying — or, rather, syllogizing — on the basis of principles of natural philosophy. But at that moment his prophecies and his syllogisms did not console me in the least. The only sure thing was that the girl would be burned. And I felt responsible, because it was as if she would also expiate on the pyre the sin I had committed with her.
I burst shamefully into sobs and fled to my cell, where all through the night I chewed my pallet and moaned helplessly, for I was not even allowed — as they did in the romances of chivalry I had read with my companions at Melk — to lament and call out the beloved’s name.
This was the only earthly love of my life, and I could not, then or ever after, call that love by name.