“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 vine-dressers 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.