FOURTH DAY

LAUDS

In which William and Severinus examine Berengar’s corpse and discover that the tongue is black, unusual in a drowned man. Then they discuss most painful poisons and a past theft.

I will not go into how we informed the abbot, how the whole abbey woke before the canonical hour, the cries of horror, the fear and grief that could be seen on every face, and how the news spread to all the people of the compound, the servants blessing themselves and uttering formulas against the evil eye. I don’t know whether the first office that morning proceeded according to regulations, or who took part in it. I followed William and Severinus, who had Berengar’s body wrapped up and ordered it laid out on a table in the infirmary.

When the abbot and the other monks had left, the herbalist and my master studied the corpse at length, with the cold detachment of men of medicine.

“He died by drowning,” Severinus said, “there’s no doubt. The face is swollen, the belly taut….”

“But he was not drowned by another’s hands,” William observed, “for in that case he would have reacted against the murderer’s violence, whereas everything was neat and clean, as if Berengar had heated the water, filled the bath, and lain in it of his own free will.”

“This doesn’t surprise me,” Severinus said. “Berengar suffered from convulsions, and I myself had often told him that warm baths serve to calm agitation of the body and the spirit. On several occasions he asked me leave to light the balneary fire. So he may have done last night….”

“Night before last,” William said, “because this body—as you see—has remained in the water at least one day….”

William informed him of some of the events of that night. He did not tell him we had been in the scriptorium furtively, but, concealing various circumstances, he told him that we had pursued a mysterious figure who had taken a book from us. Severinus realized William was telling him only a part of the truth, but he asked no further questions. He observed that the agitation of Berengar, if he had been the mysterious thief, could have led him then to seek calm in a refreshing bath. Berengar, he said, was of a very sensitive nature, and sometimes a vexation or an emotion brought on his trembling and cold sweats and made his eyes bulge, and he would fall to the ground, spitting out a whitish slime.

“In any case,” William said, “before coming here he went somewhere else, because in the balneary I didn’t see the book he stole. So he had been somewhere else, and afterward, we’ll assume that, to calm his emotion and perhaps to elude our search, he slipped into the balneary and immersed himself in the water. Severinus, do you believe his illness could make him lose consciousness and drown?”

“That’s possible,” Severinus said, dubiously. For some moments he had been examining the hands of the corpse. “Here’s a curious thing…” he said.

“What?”

“The other day I observed Venantius’s hands, when the blood had been washed off, and I noticed a detail to which I attached little importance. The tips of two fingers of Venantius’s right hand were dark, as if blackened by some dark substance. Exactly—you see?—like two fingertips of Berengar now. In fact, here we have a trace also on the third finger. At the time I thought that Venantius had handled some inks in the scriptorium….”

“Interesting,” William said pensively, taking a closer look at Berengar’s fingers. Dawn was breaking, the light indoors was still faint, and my master was obviously suffering the lack of his lenses. “Interesting,” he repeated. “But there are fainter traces also on the left hand, at least on the thumb and index.”

“If it were only the right hand, they would be the fingers of someone who grasps something small, or long and thin….”

“Like a stylus. Or some food. Or an insect. Or a serpent. Or a monstrance. Or a stick. Too many things. But if there are signs also on the other hand, it could also be a goblet; the right hand holds it firmly and the left helps, exerting less strength….”

Severinus was now gently rubbing the dead man’s fingers, but the dark color did not disappear. I noticed he had put on a pair of gloves, which he probably used when he handled poisonous substances. He sniffed, but without receiving any sensation. “I could cite for you many vegetable (and also mineral) substances that leave traces of this sort. Some lethal, others not. The illuminators sometimes have gold dust on their fingers….”

“Adelmo was an illuminator,” William said. “I imagine that, shattered as his body was, you didn’t think of examining the fingers. But these others may have touched something that had belonged to Adelmo.”

“I really don’t know,” Severinus said. “Two dead men, both with blackened fingers. What do you deduce from that?”

“I deduce nothing: nihil sequitur geminis ex particularibus unquam. Both cases would have to conform to a rule. For example: a substance exists that blackens the fingers of those who touch it….”

Triumphantly, I completed the syllogism: “…Venantius and Berengar have blackened fingers, ergo they touched this substance!”

“Good, Adso,” William said, “a pity that your syllogism is not valid, because aut semel aut iterum medium generaliter esto, and in this syllogism the middle term never appears as general. A sign that we haven’t chosen the major premise well. I shouldn’t have said that all those who touch a certain substance have black fingers, because there could also be people with black fingers who have not touched the substance. I should have said that all those and only all those who have black fingers have certainly touched a given substance. Venantius and Berengar, etc. With which we would have a Darii, an excellent third mode of the first syllogistic figure.”

“Then we have the answer,” I said, delighted.

“Alas, Adso, you have too much faith in syllogisms! What we have, once again, is simply the question. That is: we have ventured the hypothesis that Venantius and Berengar touched the same thing, an unquestionably reasonable hypothesis. But when we have imagined a substance that, alone among all substances, causes this result (which is still to be established), we still don’t know what it is or where they found it, or why they touched it. And, mind you, we don’t even know if it’s the substance they touched that brought them to their death. Imagine a madman who wants to kill all those who touch gold dust. Would we say it’s gold dust that kills?”

I was upset. I had always believed logic was a universal weapon, and now I realized how its validity depended on the way it was employed. Further, since I had been with my master I had become aware, and was to become even more aware in the days that followed, that logic could be especially useful when you entered it but then left it.

Severinus, who was surely not a logician, was meanwhile reflecting on the basis of his own experience. “The universe of poisons is various as the mysteries of nature are various,” he said. He pointed to a series of pots and ampoules, which we had already admired, neatly arranged on shelves along the walls, together with many volumes. “As I told you before, many of these herbs, duly compounded and administered in the proper dosage, could be used for lethal beverages and ointments. Over there, datura stramonium, belladonna, hemlock: they can bring on drowsiness, stimulation, or both; taken with due care they are excellent medicines, but in excess doses they bring on death.”

“But none of these substances would leave marks on the fingers?”

“None, I believe. Then there are substances that become dangerous only if ingested, whereas others act instead on the skin. And hellebore can cause vomiting in a person who grasps it to uproot it. Dittany and fraxinella, when in flower, bring on intoxication in gardeners who touch them, as if the gardeners had drunk wine. Black hellebore, merely at the touch, provokes diarrhea. Other plants cause palpitations of the heart, others of the head, still others silence the voice. But viper’s venom, applied to the skin and not allowed to enter the blood, produces only a slight irritation…. And once I was shown a compound that, when applied to the inside of a dog’s thighs, near the genitalia, causes the animal to die in a short time in horrible convulsions, as the limbs gradually grow rigid….”

“You know many things about poisons,” William said with what sounded like admiration in his voice.

Severinus looked hard into his eyes for a few moments. “I know what a physician, an herbalist, a student of the sciences of human health must know.”

William remained thoughtful for some time. Then he asked Severinus to open the corpse’s mouth and observe the tongue. Severinus, his curiosity aroused, took a thin spatula, one of the instruments of his medical art, and obeyed. He uttered a cry of amazement: “The tongue is black!”

“So, then,” William murmured, “he grasped something with his fingers and ingested it…. This eliminates the poisons you mentioned before, which kill by penetrating the skin. But it doesn’t make our deductions any easier. Because now, for him and for Venantius, we must presume a voluntary act. They grasped something and put it in their mouths, knowing what they were doing….”

“Something to eat? To drink?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps—why not?—a musical instrument, like a flute…”

“Absurd,” Severinus said.

“Of course it’s absurd. But we mustn’t dismiss any hypothesis, no matter how farfetched. Now let’s return to the poisonous substance. If someone who knows poisons as you do had broken in here and had used some of these herbs of yours, could he have produced a lethal ointment capable of causing those marks on the fingers and the tongue? Capable of being mixed with food or drink, smeared on a spoon, on something that is put in the mouth?”

“Yes,” Severinus admitted, “but who? And besides, even if we accept this hypothesis, how would he have administered the poison to our two poor brothers?”

Frankly, I myself couldn’t imagine Venantius or Berengar letting himself be approached by someone who handed him a mysterious substance and being persuaded to eat it or drink it. But William did not seem upset by this unlikelihood. “We will think about that later,” he said, “because now I would like you to try to remember some event that perhaps you haven’t recalled before. Someone who asked you questions about your herbs, for instance; someone who has easy access to the infirmary…”

“Just a moment,” Severinus said. “A long time ago, years it was, on one of those shelves I kept a highly powerful substance, given to me by a brother who had traveled in distant lands. He couldn’t tell me what it was made of, herbs for sure, but not all of them familiar. To look at, it was slimy and yellowish; but I was advised not to touch it, because if it only came into contact with my lips it would kill me in a short time. The brother told me that, when ingested even in minimal doses, in the space of a half hour it caused a feeling of great weariness, then a slow paralysis of all the limbs, and finally death. He didn’t want to carry it with him, and so he presented it to me. I kept it for a long time, because I meant to examine it somehow. Then one day there was a great storm up here. One of my assistants, a novice, had left the infirmary door open, and the hurricane wrought havoc in this room where we are now. Bottles broken, liquids spilled on the floor, herbs and powders scattered. I worked a whole day putting my things back in order, and I accepted help only in sweeping away the broken vessels and the herbs that could not be recovered. At the end I realized that the very ampoule I mentioned to you was missing. At first I was worried, then I decided it had been broken and become confused with the other rubbish. I had the infirmary floor washed carefully, and the shelves….”

“And you had seen the ampoule a few hours before the storm?”

“Yes … or, rather, no, now that I think about it. It was behind a row of pots, carefully hidden, and I didn’t check it every day….”

“Therefore, as far as you know, it could have been stolen quite a while before the storm, without your finding out?”

“Now that I think about it, yes, unquestionably.”

“And that novice of yours could have stolen it and then could have seized the occasion of the storm deliberately to leave the door open and create confusion among your things?”

Severinus seemed very excited. “Yes, of course. Not only that, but as I recall what happened, I was quite surprised that the hurricane, violent though it was, had upset so many things. It could quite well be that someone took advantage of the storm to devastate the room and produce more damage than the wind could have done!”

“Who was the novice?”

“His name was Augustine. But he died last year, a fall from scaffolding as he and other monks and servants were cleaning the sculptures of the façade of the church. Actually, now that I think about it, he swore up and down that he had not left the door open before the storm. I was the one, in my fury, who held him responsible for the accident. Perhaps he really was not guilty.”

“And so we have a third person, perhaps far more expert than a novice, who knew about your rare poison. Whom had you told about it?”

“That I really don’t remember. The abbot, of course, to ask his permission to keep such a dangerous substance. And a few others, perhaps in the library, because I was looking for some herbaria that might give me information.”

“But didn’t you tell me you keep here the books that are most useful to your art?”

“Yes, and many of them,” he said, pointing to a corner of the room where some shelves held dozens of volumes. “But then I was looking for certain books I couldn’t keep here, which Malachi actually was very reluctant to let me see. In fact, I had to ask the abbot’s authorization.” His voice sank, and he was almost shy about letting me hear his words. “You know, in a secret part of the library, they keep books on necromancy, black magic, and recipes for diabolical philters. I was allowed to consult some of these works, of necessity, and I was hoping to find a description of that poison and its functions. In vain.”

“So you spoke about it with Malachi.”

“Of course, with him definitely, and perhaps also with Berengar, who was his assistant. But you mustn’t jump to conclusions: I don’t remember clearly, perhaps other monks were present as I was talking, the scriptorium at times is fairly crowded, you know….”

“I’m not suspecting anyone. I’m only trying to understand what can have happened. In any event, you tell me this took place some years ago, and it’s odd that anyone would steal a poison and then not use it until so much later. It would suggest a malignant mind brooding for a long time in darkness over a murderous plan.”

Severinus blessed himself, an expression of horror on his face. “God forgive us all!” he said.

There was no further comment to be made. We again covered Berengar’s body, which had to be prepared for the funeral.

PRIME

In which William induces first Salvatore and then the cellarer to confess their past, Severinus finds the stolen lenses, Nicholas brings the new ones, and William, now with six eyes, goes to decipher the manuscript of Venantius.

We were coming out as Malachi entered. He seemed very annoyed to find us there and started to leave again. From inside, Severinus saw him and said, “Were you looking for me? Is it for—” He broke off, glancing at us. Malachi signaled to him, imperceptibly, as if to say, “We’ll talk about it later….” We were going out as he was entering, and so all three of us were in the doorway.

Malachi said, somewhat redundantly, “I was looking for the brother herbalist…. I … I have a headache.”

“It must be the enclosed air of the library,” William said to him, in a tone of considerate sympathy. “You should inhale something.”

Malachi’s lips twitched as if he wanted to speak again, but then he gave up the idea, bowed his head, and went on inside, as we moved off.

“What is he seeing Severinus for?” I asked.

“Adso,” my master said to me impatiently, “learn to use your head and think.” Then he changed the subject: “We must question some people now. At least,” he added, as his eyes explored the grounds, “while they’re still alive. By the way: from now on we must be careful about what we eat and drink. Always take your food from the common plate, and your beverage from the pitcher the others have filled their cups from. After Berengar we are the ones who know most. Except, naturally, the murderer.”

“But whom do you want to question now?”

“Adso,” William said, “you will have observed that here the most interesting things happen at night. They die at night, they wander about the scriptorium at night, women are brought at night into the abbey…. We have a daytime abbey and a nighttime abbey, and the nighttime one seems, unhappily, the more interesting. So, every person who roams about at night interests us, including, for example, the man you saw last night with the girl. Perhaps the business of the girl does not have anything to do with the poisonings, and perhaps it has. In any case, I have my ideas about last night’s man, and he must be one who knows other things about the nocturnal life of this holy place. And, speak of the Devil, here he is, coming this way.”

He pointed to Salvatore, who had also seen us. I noticed a slight hesitation in his step, as if, wishing to avoid us, he was about to turn around. But it was only for a moment. Obviously, he realized he couldn’t escape the meeting, and he continued toward us. He greeted us with a broad smile and a fairly unctuous “Benedicite.” My master hardly allowed him to finish and spoke to him sharply.

“You know the Inquisition arrives here tomorrow?” he asked him.

Salvatore didn’t seem pleased with this news. In a faint voice, he asked, “And me?”

“And you would be wise to tell the truth to me, your friend and a Friar Minor as you once were, rather than have to tell it tomorrow to those whom you know quite well.”

Attacked so brusquely, Salvatore seemed to abandon all resistance. With a meek air he looked at William, as if to indicate he was ready to tell whatever he was asked.

“Last night there was a woman in the kitchen. Who was with her?”

“Oh, a female who sells herself like mercandia cannot be bona or have cortesia,” Salvatore recited.

“I don’t want to know whether the girl is pure. I want to know who was with her!”

“Deu, these evil females are all clever! They think di e noche about how to trap a man….”

William seized him roughly by the chest. “Who was with her, you or the cellarer?”

Salvatore realized he couldn’t go on lying. He began to tell a strange story, from which, with great effort, we learned that, to please the cellarer, he procured girls for him in the village, introducing them within the walls at night by paths he would not reveal to us. But he swore he acted out of the sheer goodness of his heart, betraying a comic regret that he could not find a way to enjoy his own pleasure and see that the girl, having satisfied the cellarer, would give something also to him. He said all this with slimy, lubricious smiles and winks, as if to suggest he was speaking to men made of flesh, accustomed to such practices. He stole glances at me, nor could I check him as I would have liked, because I felt myself bound to him by a common secret, his accomplice and companion in sin.

At this point William decided to stake everything. He asked Salvatore abruptly, “Did you know Remigio before or after you were with Dolcino?”

Salvatore knelt at his feet, begging him, between sobs, not to destroy him, to save him from the Inquisition. William solemnly swore not to tell anyone what he would learn, and Salvatore did not hesitate to deliver the cellarer into our hands. The two men had met on Bald Mountain, both in Dolcino’s band; Salvatore and the cellarer had fled together and had entered the convent of Casale, and, still together, they had joined the Cluniacs. As he stammered out pleas for forgiveness, it was clear there was nothing further to be learned from him. William decided it was worth taking Remigio by surprise, and he left Salvatore, who ran to seek refuge in the church.

The cellarer was on the opposite side of the abbey, in front of the granaries, bargaining with some peasants from the valley. He looked at us apprehensively and tried to act very busy, but William insisted on speaking with him.

“For reasons connected with your position you are obviously forced to move about the abbey even when the others are asleep, I imagine,” William said.

“That depends,” Remigio answered. “Sometimes there are little matters to deal with, and I have to sacrifice a few hours’ sleep.”

“Has nothing happened to you, in these cases, that might indicate there is someone else roaming about, without your justification, between the kitchen and the library?”

“If I had seen anything, I would have told the abbot.”

“Of course,” William agreed, and abruptly changed the subject: “The village down below is not very rich, is it?”

“Yes and no,” Remigio answered. “Some prebenders live there, abbey dependents, and they share our wealth in the good years. For example, on Saint John’s Day they received twelve bushels of malt, a horse, seven oxen, a bull, four heifers, five calves, twenty sheep, fifteen pigs, fifty chickens, and seventeen hives. Also twenty smoked pigs, twenty-seven tubs of lard, half a measure of honey, three measures of soap, a fishnet…”

“I understand, I understand,” William interrupted him. “But you must admit that this still tells me nothing of the situation of the village, how many among its inhabitants have prebends, and how much land those who are not prebendaries possess to cultivate on their own….”

“Oh, as far as that goes,” Remigio said, “a normal family down there has as much as fifty tablets of land.”

“How much is a tablet?”

“Four square trabucchi, of course.”

“Square trabucchi? How much are they?”

“Thirty-six square feet is a square trabucco. Or, if you prefer, eight hundred linear trabucchi make a Piedmont mile. And calculate that a family—in the lands to the north—can cultivate olives for at least half a sack of oil.”

“Half a sack?”

“Yes, one sack makes five emine, and one emina makes eight cups.”

“I see,” my master said, disheartened. “Every locality has its own measures. Do you measure wine, for example, by the tankard?”

“Or by the rubbio. Six rubbie make one brenta, and eight brente, a keg. If you like, one rubbio is six pints from two tankards.”

“I believe my ideas are clear now,” William said, resigned.

“Do you wish to know anything else?” Remigio asked, with a tone that to me seemed defiant.

“Yes, I was asking you about how they live in the valley, because today in the library I was meditating on the sermons to women by Humbert of Romans, and in particular on that chapter “Ad mulieres pauperes in villulis,” in which he says that they, more than others, are tempted to sins of the flesh because of their poverty, and wisely he says that they commit mortal sin when they sin with a layman, but the mortality of the sin becomes greater when it is committed with a priest, and greatest of all when the sin is with a monk, who is dead to the world. You know better than I that even in holy places such as abbeys the temptations of the noontime Devil are never wanting. I was wondering whether in your contacts with the people of the village you had heard that some monks, God forbid, had induced maidens into fornication.”

Although my master said these things in an almost absent tone, my reader can imagine how the words upset the poor cellarer. I cannot say he blanched, but I will say that I was so expecting him to turn pale that I saw him look whiter.

“You ask me about things that I would already have told the abbot if I knew them,” he answered humbly. “In any case, if, as I imagine, this information serves for your investigation, I will not keep silent about anything I may learn. Indeed, now that you remind me, with regard to your first question … The night poor Adelmo died, I was stirring about the yard … a question of the hens, you know … I had heard rumors that one of the blacksmiths was stealing from the chicken coops at night…. Yes, that night I did happen to see—from the distance, I couldn’t swear to it—Berengar going back into the dormitory, moving along the choir, as if he had come from the Aedificium…. I wasn’t surprised; there had been whispering about Berengar among the monks for some time. Perhaps you’ve heard…”

“No. Tell me.”

“Well … how can I say it? Berengar was suspected of harboring passions that … that are not proper for a monk….”

“Are you perhaps trying to tell me he had relations with village girls, as I was asking you?”

The cellarer coughed, embarrassed, and flashed a somewhat obscene smile. “Oh, no … even less proper passions…”

“Then a monk who enjoys carnal satisfaction with a village maid is indulging in passions, on the other hand, that are somehow proper?”

“I didn’t say that, but you’ll agree that there is a hierarchy of depravity as there is of virtue…. The flesh can be tempted according to nature and … against nature.”

“You’re telling me that Berengar was impelled by carnal desires for those of his own sex?”

“I’m saying that such were the whisperings…. I’m informing you of these things as proof of my sincerity and my good will….”

“And I thank you. And I agree with you that the sin of sodomy is far worse than other forms of lust, which, frankly, I am not inclined to investigate….”

“Sad, wretched things, even if they prove to have taken place,” the cellarer said philosophically.

“Yes, Remigio. We are all wretched sinners. I would never seek the mote in a brother’s eye, since I am so afraid of having a great beam in my own. But I will be grateful to you for any beams you may mention to me in the future. So we will talk great, sturdy trunks of wood and we will allow the motes to swirl in the air. How much did you say a square trabucco was?”

“Thirty-six square feet. But you mustn’t waste your time. When you wish to know something specific, come to me. Consider me a faithful friend.”

“I do consider you as such,” William said warmly. “Ubertino told me that you once belonged to my own order. I would never betray a former brother, especially in these days when we are awaiting the arrival of a papal legation led by a grand inquisitor, famous for having burned many Dolcinians. You said a square trabucco equals thirty-six square feet?”

The cellarer was no fool. He decided it was no longer worthwhile playing at cat and mouse, particularly since he realized he was the mouse.

“Brother William,” he said, “I see you know many more things than I imagined. Help me, and I’ll help you. It’s true, I am a poor man of flesh, and I succumb to the lures of the flesh. Salvatore told me that you or your novice caught them last night in the kitchen. You have traveled widely, William; you know that not even the cardinals in Avignon are models of virtue. I know you are not questioning me because of these wretched little sins. But I also realize you have learned something of my past. I have had a strange life, like many of us Minorites. Years ago I believed in the ideal of poverty, and I abandoned the community to live as a vagabond. I believed in Dolcino’s preaching, as many others like me did. I’m not an educated man; I’ve been ordained, but I can barely say Mass. I know little of theology. And perhaps I’m not really moved by ideas. You see, I once tried to rebel against the overlords; now I serve them, and for the sake of the lord of these lands I give orders to men like myself. Betray or rebel: we simple folk have little choice.”

“Sometimes the simple understand things better than the learned,” William said.

“Perhaps,” the cellarer said with a shrug. “But I don’t even know why I did what I did, then. You see, for Salvatore it was comprehensible: his parents were serfs, he came from a childhood of hardship and illness…. Dolcino represented rebellion, the destruction of the lords. For me it was different: I came from a city family, I wasn’t running away from hunger. It was—I don’t know how to say it—a feast of fools, a magnificent carnival…. On the mountains with Dolcino, before we were reduced to eating the flesh of our companions killed in battle, before so many died of hardship that we couldn’t eat them all, and they were thrown to the birds and the wild animals on the slopes of Rebello … or maybe in those moments, too … there was an atmosphere … can I say of freedom? I didn’t know, before, what freedom was; the preachers said to us, ‘The truth will make you free.’ We felt free, we thought that was the truth. We thought everything we were doing was right….”

“And there you took … to uniting yourself freely with women?” I asked, and I don’t even know why, but since the night before, Ubertino’s words had been haunting me, along with what I had read in the scriptorium and the events that had befallen me. William looked at me, curious; he had probably not expected me to be so bold and outspoken. The cellarer stared at me as if I were a strange animal.

“On Rebello,” he said, “there were people who throughout their childhood had slept, ten or more of them, in a room of a few cubits—brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters. What do you think this new situation meant to them? They did from choice what they had formerly done from necessity. And then, at night, when you fear the arrival of the enemy troops and you cling tight to your neighbor, on the ground, so as not to feel cold … The heretics: you pitiful monks who come from a castle and end up in an abbey think that it’s a form of belief, inspired by the Devil. But it’s a way of living, and it is … it was … a new experience…. There were no more masters; and God, we were told, was with us. I’m not saying we were right, William, and, in fact, you find me here because I abandoned them before long. But I never really understood our learned disputes about the poverty of Christ and ownership and rights…. I told you, it was a great carnival, and in carnival time everything is done backward. As you grow old, you grow not wise but greedy. And here I am, a glutton…. You can condemn a heretic to death, but would you condemn a glutton?”

“That’s enough, Remigio,” William said. “I’m not questioning you about what happened then, but about what happened recently. Be frank with me, and I will surely not seek your downfall. I cannot and would not judge you. But you must tell me what you know about events in the abbey. You move about too much, night and day, not to know something. Who killed Venantius?”

“I do not know, I give you my solemn oath. I know when he died, and where.”

“When? Where?”

“I’ll tell you. That night, an hour after compline, I went into the kitchen….”

“How did you enter, and for what reasons?”

“By the door from the vegetable garden. I have a key I had the smiths make for me long ago. The kitchen door is the only one not barred on the inside. And my reasons … are not important; you said yourself you don’t want to condemn me for my weaknesses of the flesh….” He smiled, embarrassed. “But I wouldn’t want you to believe I spend my days in fornication, either…. That night I was looking for food to give to the girl Salvatore was to bring into the kitchen….”

“Where from?”

“Oh, the outside walls have other entrances besides the gate. The abbot knows them; I know them…. But that evening the girl didn’t come in; I sent her back precisely because of what I discovered, what I’m about to tell you. This is why I tried to have her return last night. If you’d arrived a bit later you would have found me instead of Salvatore; it was he who warned me there were people in the Aedificium. So I went back to my cell….”

“Let’s return to the night between Sunday and Monday.”

“Yes, then. I entered the kitchen, and on the floor I saw Venantius, dead.”

“In the kitchen?”

“Yes, near the sink. Perhaps he had just come down from the scriptorium.”

“No sign of a struggle?”

“None. Though there was a broken cup beside the body, and traces of water on the ground.”

“How do you know it was water?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was water. What else might it have been?”

As William pointed out to me later, that cup could mean two different things. Either someone had given Venantius a poisoned potion to drink right there in the kitchen, or else the poor youth had already taken the poison (but where? and when?) and had come down to drink, to soothe a sudden burning, a spasm, a pain that seared his viscera or his tongue (for certainly his must have been black like Berengar’s).

In any case, we could learn no more for the moment. Having glanced at the corpse, terrified, Remigio asked himself what he should do and decided he would do nothing. If he sought help, he would have to admit he had been wandering around the Aedificium at night, nor would it do his now lost brother any good. Therefore, he resolved to leave things as they were, waiting for someone else to discover the body in the morning, when the doors were opened. He rushed to head off Salvatore, who was already bringing the girl into the abbey, then he and his accomplice went off to sleep, if their agitated vigil till matins could be called that. And at matins, when the swineherds brought the news to the abbot, Remigio believed the body had been discovered where he had left it, and was aghast to find it in the jar. Who had spirited the corpse out of the kitchen? For this Remigio had no explanation.

“The only one who can move freely about the Aedificium is Malachi,” William said.

The cellarer reacted violently: “No, not Malachi. That is, I don’t believe … In any case, I didn’t say anything to you against Malachi….”

“Rest assured, whatever your debt to Malachi may be. Does he know something about you?”

“Yes.” The cellarer blushed. “And he has behaved like a man of discretion. If I were you, I would keep an eye on Benno. He had strange connections with Berengar and Venantius…. But I swear to you, I’ve seen nothing else. If I learn something, I’ll tell you.”

“For the present this will do. I’ll seek you out again if I need you.” The cellarer, obviously relieved, returned to his dealings, sharply reproaching the peasants, who in the meantime had apparently shifted some sacks of seeds.

At that point Severinus joined us. In his hand he was carrying William’s lenses—the ones stolen two nights before. “I found them inside Berengar’s habit,” he said. “I saw them on your nose the other day in the scriptorium. They are yours, aren’t they?”

“God be praised,” William cried joyously. “We’ve solved two problems! I have my lenses and I finally know for sure that it was Berengar who robbed us the other night in the scriptorium!”

We had barely finished speaking when Nicholas of Morimondo came running up, even more triumphant than William. In his hands he held a finished pair of lenses, mounted on their fork. “William,” he cried, “I did it all by myself. I’ve finished them! I believe they’ll work!” Then he saw that William had other lenses on his nose, and he was stunned. William didn’t want to humiliate him: he took off his old lenses and tried on the new ones. “These are better than the others,” he said. “So I’ll keep the old ones as a spare pair, and will always use yours.” Then he turned to me. “Adso, now I shall withdraw to my cell to read those papers you know about. At last! Wait for me somewhere. And thank you, thank all of you, dearest brothers.”

Terce was ringing and I went to the choir, to recite with the others the hymn, the psalms, the verses, and the “Kyrie.” The others were praying for the soul of the dead Berengar. I was thanking God for having allowed us to find not one but two pairs of lenses.

In that great peace, forgetting all the ugly things I had seen and heard, I dozed off, waking only as the office ended. I realized I hadn’t slept that night and I was distressed to think also how I had expended much of my strength. And at this point, coming out into the fresh air, I began to find my thoughts obsessed by the memory of the girl.

Trying to distract myself, I began to stride rapidly over the grounds. I felt a slight dizziness. I clapped my numbed hands together. I stamped my feet on the earth. I was still sleepy, and yet I felt awake and full of life. I could not understand what was happening to me.

TERCE

In which Adso writhes in the torments of love, then William arrives with Venantius’s text, which remains undecipherable even after it has been deciphered.

To tell the truth, the other terrible events following my sinful encounter with the girl had caused me almost to forget that occurrence, and once I had confessed to Brother William, my spirit was relieved of the remorse I had felt on waking after my guilty lapse, so it was as if I had handed over to the monk, with my words, the burden itself of which they were the signifying voice. What is the purpose of the holy cleansing of confession, if not to unload the weight of sin, and the remorse it involves, into the very bosom of our Lord, obtaining with absolution a new and airy lightness of soul, such as to make us forget the body tormented by wickedness? But I was not freed of everything. Now, as I walked in the cold, pale sun of that winter morning, surrounded by the fervor of men and animals, I began to remember my experiences in a different way. As if, from everything that had happened, my repentance and the consoling words of the penitential cleansing no longer remained, but only visions of bodies and human limbs. Into my feverish mind came abruptly the ghost of Berengar, swollen with water, and I shuddered with revulsion and pity. Then, as if to dispel that lemur, my mind turned to other images of which the memory was a fresh receptacle, and I could not avoid seeing, clear before my eyes (the eyes of the soul, but almost as if it appeared before my fleshly eyes), the image of the girl, beautiful and terrible as an army arrayed for battle.

I have vowed (aged amanuensis of a text till now unwritten, though for long decades it has spoken in my mind) to be a faithful chronicler, not only out of love for the truth, or the desire (worthy though it be) to instruct my future readers, but also out of a need to free my memory, dried up and weary of visions that have troubled it for a whole lifetime. Therefore, I must tell everything, decently but without shame. And I must say now, and clearly, what I thought then and almost tried to conceal from myself, walking over the grounds, sometimes breaking into a run so that I might attribute to the motion of my body the sudden pounding of my heart, or stopping to admire the work of the villeins, deluding myself that I was being distracted by such contemplation, breathing the cold air deeply into my lungs, as a man drinks wine to forget fear or sorrow.

In vain. I thought of the girl. My flesh had forgotten the intense pleasure, sinful and fleeting (a base thing), that union with her had given me; but my soul had not forgotten her face, and could not manage to feel that this memory was perverse: rather, it throbbed as if in that face shone all the bliss of creation.

I sensed, in a confused way, and almost denying to myself the truth of what I felt, that the poor, filthy, impudent creature who sold herself (who knows with what stubborn constancy) to other sinners, that daughter of Eve, weak like all her sisters, who had so often bartered her own flesh, was yet something splendid and wondrous. My intellect knew her as an occasion of sin, my sensitive appetite perceived her as the vessel of every grace. It is difficult to say what I felt. I could try to write that, still caught in the snares of sin, I desired, culpably, for her to appear at every moment, and I spied on the labor of the workers to see whether, around the corner of a hut or from the darkness of a barn, that form that had seduced me might emerge. But I would not be writing the truth, or, rather, I would be attempting to draw a veil over the truth to attenuate its force and clarity. Because the truth is that I “saw” the girl, I saw her in the branches of the bare tree that stirred lightly when a benumbed sparrow flew to seek refuge there; I saw her in the eyes of the heifers that came out of the barn, and I heard her in the bleating of the sheep that crossed my erratic path. It was as if all creation spoke to me of her, and I desired to see her again, true, but I was also prepared to accept the idea of never seeing her again, and of never lying again with her, provided that I could savor the joy that filled me that morning, and have her always near even if she were to be, and for eternity, distant. It was, now I am trying to understand, as if—just as the whole universe is surely like a book written by the finger of God, in which everything speaks to us of the immense goodness of its Creator, in which every creature is description and mirror of life and death, in which the humblest rose becomes a gloss of our terrestrial progress—everything, in other words, spoke to me only of the face I had hardly glimpsed in the aromatic shadows of the kitchen. I dwelled on these fantasies because I said to myself (or, rather, did not say: at that moment I did not formulate thoughts translatable into words) that if the whole world is destined to speak to me of the power, goodness, and wisdom of the Creator, and if that morning the whole world spoke to me of the girl, who (sinner though she may have been) was nevertheless a chapter in the great book of creation, a verse of the great psalm chanted by the cosmos—I said to myself (I say now) that if this occurred, it could only be a part of the great theophanic design that sustains the universe, arranged like a lyre, miracle of consonance and harmony. As if intoxicated, I then enjoyed her presence in the things I saw, and, desiring her in them, with the sight of them I was sated.

And yet I felt a kind of sorrow, because at the same time I suffered from an absence, though I was happy with the many ghosts of a presence. It is difficult for me to explain this mystery of contradiction, sign that the human spirit is fragile and never proceeds directly along the paths of divine reason, which has built the world as a perfect syllogism, but instead grasps only isolated and often disjointed propositions of this syllogism, whence derives the ease with which we fall victims to the deceptions of the Evil One. Was it a deception of the Evil One, that morning, that so moved me? I think today that it was, because I was a novice, but I think that the human feeling that stirred me was not bad in itself, but only with regard to my state. Because in itself it was the feeling that moves man toward woman so that the one couples with the other, as the apostle of the Gentiles wants, and that both be flesh of one flesh, and that together they procreate new human beings and succor each other from youth to old age. Only the apostle spoke thus for those who seek a remedy for lust and who do not wish to burn, recalling, however, that the condition of chastity is far preferable, the condition to which as a monk I had consecrated myself. And therefore what I suffered that morning was evil for me, but for others perhaps was good, the sweetest of good things; thus I understand now that my distress was not due to the depravity of my thoughts, in themselves worthy and sweet, but to the depravity of the gap between my thoughts and the vows I had pronounced. And therefore I was doing evil in enjoying something that was good in one situation, bad in another; and my fault lay in trying to reconcile natural appetite and the dictates of the rational soul. Now I know that I was suffering from the conflict between the elicit appetite of the intellect, in which the will’s rule should have been displayed, and the elicit appetite of the senses, subject to human passions. In fact, as Aquinas says, the acts of the sensitive appetite are called passions precisely because they involve a bodily change. And my appetitive act was, as it happened, accompanied by a trembling of the whole body, by a physical impulse to cry out and to writhe. The angelic doctor says that the passions in themselves are not evil, but they must be governed by the will led by the rational soul. But my rational soul that morning was dazed by weariness, which kept in check the irascible appetite, addressed to good and evil as terms of conquest, but not the concupiscent appetite, addressed to good and evil as known entities. To justify my irresponsible recklessness of that time, I will say now that I was unquestionably seized by love, which is passion and is cosmic law, because the weight of bodies is actually natural love. And by this passion I was naturally seduced, and I understood why the angelic doctor said that amor est magis cognitivus quam cognitio, that we know things better through love than through knowledge. In fact, I now saw the girl better than I had seen her the previous night, and I understood her intus et in cute because in her I understood myself and in myself her. I now wonder whether what I felt was the love of friendship, in which like loves like and wants only the other’s good, or love of concupiscence, in which one wants one’s own good and the lacking wants only what completes it. And I believe that the nighttime love had been concupiscent, for I wanted from the girl something I had never had; whereas that morning I wanted nothing from the girl, and I wanted only her good, and I wished her to be saved from the cruel necessity that drove her to barter herself for a bit of food, and I wished her to be happy; nor did I want to ask anything further of her, but only to think of her and see her in sheep, oxen, trees, in the serene light that bathed in happiness the grounds of the abbey.

Now I know that good is cause of love and that which is good is defined by knowledge, and you can only love what you have learned is good, whereas I had, indeed, learned that the girl was the good of the irascible appetite, but the evil of the will. But I was in the grip of so many and such conflicting emotions, because what I felt was like the holiest love just as the doctors describe it: it produced in me that ecstasy in which lover and beloved want the same thing (and by mysterious enlightenment I, in that moment, knew that the girl, wherever she was, wanted the same things I myself wanted), and for her I felt jealousy, but not the evil kind, condemned by Paul in 1 Corinthians, but that which Dionysius speaks of in The Divine Names whereby God also is called jealous because of the great love He feels for all creation (and I loved the girl precisely because she existed, and I was happy, not envious, that she existed). I was jealous in the way in which, for the angelic doctor, jealousy is motus in amatum, the jealousy of friendship, which inspires us to move against all that harms the beloved (and I dreamed, at that moment, only of freeing the girl from the power of him who was buying her flesh and befouling it with his own infamous passions).

Now I know, as the doctor says, that love can harm the lover when it is excessive. And mine was excessive. I have tried to explain what I felt then, not in the least to justify what I felt. I am speaking of what were my sinful ardors of youth. They were bad, but truth obliges me to say that at the time I felt them to be extremely good. And let this serve to instruct anyone who may fall, as I did, into the nets of temptation. Today, an old man, I would know a thousand ways of evading such seductions. And I wonder how proud of them I should be, since I am free of the temptations of the noontime Devil; but not free from others, so that I ask myself whether what I am now doing is not a sinful succumbing to the terrestrial passion of recollection, a foolish attempt to elude the flow of time, and death.

Then, I saved myself as if by miraculous instinct. The girl appeared to me in nature and in the works of man that surrounded me. I sought then, thanks to a happy intuition of my soul, to lose myself in the relaxed contemplation of those works. I observed the cowherds as they led the oxen out of the stable, the swineherds taking food to the pigs, the shepherds shouting to the dogs to collect the sheep, peasants carrying cracked wheat and millet to the mills and coming out with sacks of good food. I lost myself in the contemplation of nature, trying to forget my thoughts and to look only at beings as they appear, and to forget myself, joyfully, in the sight of them.

How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!

I saw the lamb, to which this name was given as if in recognition of its purity and goodness. In fact the noun “agnus” derives from the fact that this animal “agnoscit”; it recognizes its mother, and recognizes her voice in the midst of the flock while the mother, among many lambs of the same form, with the same bleating, recognizes always and only her offspring, and nourishes him. I saw the sheep, which is called “ovis” from “ab oblatione” because from earliest times it served for sacrificial rites; the sheep, which, as is its habit as winter approaches, seeks grass greedily and stuffs itself with forage before the pastures are seared by frost. And the flocks were watched by dogs, called “canes” from the verb “canor” because of their barking. The perfect animal among animals, with superior gifts of perception, the dog recognizes its master and is trained to hunt wild animals in the forests, to guard flocks against wolves; it protects the master’s house and his children, and sometimes in its office of defense it is killed. King Garamant, who had been taken away to prison by his enemies, was brought back to his homeland by a pack of two hundred dogs who made their way past the enemy troops; the dog of Jason Licius, after its master’s death, persisted in refusing food until it died of starvation; and the dog of King Lysimachus threw himself on his master’s funeral pyre, to die with him. The dog has the power to heal wounds by licking them with his tongue, and the tongue of his puppies can heal intestinal lesions. By nature he is accustomed to making second use of the same food, after vomiting it. His sobriety is the symbol of perfection of spirit, as the thaumaturgical power of his tongue is the symbol of the purification of sins through confession and penance. But the dog’s returning to his vomit is also a sign that, after confession, we return to the same sins as before, and this moral was very useful to me that morning to admonish my heart, as I admired the wonders of nature.

Meanwhile, my steps were taking me to the oxen’s stable, where they were coming out in great number, led by their drovers. They immediately appeared to me as they were and are, symbols of friendship and goodness, because every ox at his work turns to seek his companion at the plow; if by chance the partner is absent at that moment, the ox calls him with affectionate lowing. Oxen learn obediently to go back by themselves to the barn when it rains, and when they take refuge at the manger, they constantly stretch their necks to look out and see whether the bad weather has stopped, because they are eager to resume work. With the oxen at that moment also came from the barn the calves, whose name, “vituli,” derives from “viriditas,” or from “virgo,” because at that age they are still fresh, young, and chaste, and I had done wrong and was still wrong, I said to myself, to see in their graceful movements an image of the girl who was not chaste. I thought of these things, again at peace with the world and with myself, observing the merry toil of that morning hour. And I thought no more of the girl, or, rather, I made an effort to transform the ardor I felt for her into a sense of inner happiness and devout peace.

I said to myself that the world was good and admirable. That the goodness of God is made manifest also in the most horrid beasts, as Honorius Augustoduniensis explains. It is true, there are serpents so huge that they devour stags and swim across the ocean, there is the bestia cenocroca with an ass’s body, the horns of an ibex, the chest and maw of a lion, a horse’s hoofs but cloven like an ox’s, a slit from the mouth that reaches the ears, an almost human voice, and in the place of teeth a single, solid bone. And there is the manticore, with a man’s face, triple set of teeth, lion’s body, scorpion’s tail, glaucous eyes the color of blood, and a voice like the hissing of snakes, greedy for human flesh. And there are monsters with eight toes, wolf’s muzzle, hooked talons, sheep’s fleece, and dog’s back, who in old age turn black instead of white, and who outlive us by many years. And there are creatures with eyes on their shoulders and two holes in the chest instead of nostrils, because they lack a head, and others that dwell along the river Ganges who live only on the odor of a certain apple, and when they go away from it they die. But even all these foul beasts sing in their variety the praises of the Creator and His wisdom, as do the dog and the ox, the sheep and the lamb and the lynx. How great, I said to myself then, repeating the words of Vincent Belovacensis, the humblest beauty of this world, and how pleasing to the eye of reason the consideration of not only the modes and numbers and orders of things, so decorously established for the whole universe, but also the cycle of times that constantly unravel through successions and lapses, marked by the death of what has been born. I confess that, sinner as I am, my soul only for a little while still prisoner of the flesh, I was moved then by spiritual sweetness toward the Creator and the rule of this world, and with joyous veneration I admired the greatness and the stability of creation.

I was in this good frame of mind when my master came upon me. Drawn by my feet and without realizing it, I had almost circled the abbey, and found myself back where we had parted two hours before. There was William, and what he told me jolted me from my thoughts and directed my mind again to the obscure mysteries of the abbey.

William seemed well pleased. In his hand he had Venantius’s parchment, which he had finally deciphered. We went to his cell, far from indiscreet ears, and he translated for me what he had read. After the sentence in zodiacal alphabet (Secretum finis Africae manus supra idolum primum et septimum de quatuor), this is what the Greek text said:

The terrible poison that gives purification…

The best weapon for destroying the enemy…

Use humble persons, base and ugly, take pleasure from their defect…. They must not die…. Not in the houses of the noble and the powerful but from the peasants’ villages, after abundant meal and libations … Squat bodies, deformed faces.

They rape virgins and lie with whores, not evil, without fear.

A different truth, a different image of the truth…

The venerable figs.

The shameless stone rolls over the plain…. Before the eyes.

Deceit is necessary and to surprise in deceit, to say the opposite of what is believed, to say one thing and mean another.

To them the cicadas will sing from the ground.

That was all. In my opinion too little, almost nothing. The words seemed the ravings of a madman, and I said as much to William.

“Perhaps. And it surely seems even madder thanks to my translation. My knowledge of Greek is rather scanty. And yet, even if we assume that Venantius was mad or that the author of the book was mad, this would not tell us why so many people, not all of them mad, went to great trouble, first to hide the book and then to recover it….”

“But do the things written here come from the mysterious book?”

“They are unquestionably things written by Venantius. You can see for yourself: this is not an ancient parchment. And these must be notes taken down while he was reading the book; otherwise Venantius would not have written in Greek. He has certainly copied, condensing them, some sentences he found in the book stolen from the finis Africae. He carried it to the scriptorium and began to read it, noting down what seemed to him noteworthy. Then something happened. Either he felt ill, or he heard someone coming up. So he put the book, with his notes, under his desk, probably planning to pick it up again the next evening. In any case, this page is our only possible starting point in re-creating the nature of the mysterious book, and it’s only from the nature of that book that we will be able to infer the nature of the murderer. For in every crime committed to possess an object, the nature of the object should give us an idea, however faint, of the nature of the assassin. If someone kills for a handful of gold, he will be a greedy person; if for a book, he will be anxious to keep for himself the secrets of that book. So we must find out what is said in the book we do not have.”

“And from these few lines will you be able to understand what that book is?”

“Dear Adso, these seem like the words of a holy text, whose meaning goes beyond the letter. Reading them this morning, after we had spoken with the cellarer, I was struck by the fact that here, too, there are references to the simple folk and to peasants as bearers of a truth different from that of the wise. The cellarer hinted that some strange complicity bound him to Malachi. Can Malachi have hidden a dangerous heretical text that Remigio had entrusted to him? Then Venantius would have read and annotated some mysterious instructions concerning a community of rough and base men in revolt against everything and everybody. But…”

“But?”

“But two facts work against this hypothesis of mine. The first is that Venantius didn’t seem interested in such questions: he was a translator of Greek texts, not a preacher of heresies. The other is that sentences like the ones about the figs and the stone and the cicadas would not be explained by this first hypothesis….”

“Perhaps they are riddles with another meaning,” I ventured. “Or do you have another hypothesis?”

“I have, but it is still vague. It seemed to me, as I read this page, that I had read some of these words before, and some phrases that are almost the same, which I have seen elsewhere, return to my mind. It seems to me, indeed, that this page speaks of something there has been talk about during these past days…. But I cannot recall what. I must think it over. Perhaps I’ll have to read other books.”

“Why? To know what one book says you must read others?”

“At times this can be so. Often books speak of other books. Often a harmless book is like a seed that will blossom into a dangerous book, or it is the other way around: it is the sweet fruit of a bitter stem. In reading Albert, couldn’t I learn what Thomas might have said? Or in reading Thomas, know what Averroës said?”

“True,” I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.

“But then,” I said, “what is the use of hiding books, if from the books not hidden you can arrive at the concealed ones?”

“Over the centuries it is no use at all. In a space of years or days it has some use. You see, in fact, how bewildered we are.”

“And is a library, then, an instrument not for distributing the truth but for delaying its appearance?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Not always and not necessarily. In this case it is.”

SEXT

In which Adso goes hunting for truffles and sees the Minorites arriving, they confer at length with William and Ubertino, and very sad things are learned about John XXII.

After these considerations my master decided to proceed no further. I have already said that he occasionally had moments of total inactivity, as if the ceaseless cycle of the stars had stopped, and he with it and with them. And so it was that morning. He stretched out on his pallet, staring into the void, his hands folded on his chest, barely moving his lips, as if he were reciting a prayer, but irregularly and without devotion.

I thought he was thinking, and I resolved to respect his meditation. I returned to the courtyard and saw that the sun had grown weaker. Beautiful and clear as it had been, the morning (as the day approached the completion of its first half) was becoming damp and misty. Heavy clouds moved from the north and were invading the top of the mountain, covering it with a light brume. It seemed to be fog, and perhaps fog was also rising from the ground, but at that altitude it was difficult to distinguish the mists that rose from below and those that came down from above. It was becoming hard to discern the bulk of the more distant buildings.

I saw Severinus gaily assembling the swineherds and some of their animals. He told me he was going to descend along the mountain slopes, and into the valley, to hunt for truffles. I wasn’t familiar with that choice fruit of the underbrush, which was found in the peninsula and seemed typical especially of the Benedictine domains, whether at Norcia—the black ones—or in these lands—the white and more aromatic. Severinus explained to me what a truffle was, and how tasty, when prepared in the most diverse ways. And he told me it was very difficult to find, because it was hidden underground, more secret than a mushroom, and the only animals capable of unearthing it were pigs, following their smell. But on finding it they wanted to devour it themselves, and they had to be chased off at once, so that you could step in and dig up the truffle. I learned later that many lords did not disdain to join this hunt, following the pigs as if they were noblest hounds, and followed, in turn, by servants with hoes. I remember, indeed, that in later years a lord of my country, knowing I was acquainted with Italy, asked me why, as he had seen down there, some lords went out to pasture their pigs; and I laughed, realizing that, on the contrary, they were going in search of truffles. But when I told him that these lords hoped to find the “truffle” underground, to eat it, he thought I had said they were seeking “der Teufel,” the Devil, and he blessed himself devoutly, looking at me in amazement. Then the misunderstanding was cleared up and we both laughed at it. Such is the magic of human languages, that by human accord often the same sounds mean different things.

My curiosity aroused by Severinus’s preparations, I decided to follow him, also because I realized he was turning to this hunt in order to forget the sad events that oppressed everyone; and I thought that in helping him to forget his thoughts I would perhaps, if not forget, at least restrain my own. Nor will I deny, since I have determined to write always and only the truth, that I was secretly lured by the idea that, down in the valley, I might perhaps glimpse someone I will not mention. But to myself and almost aloud I declared that, since the two legations were expected to arrive that day, I might perhaps sight one of them.

As we gradually descended the curves of the mountain, the air became clearer. Not that the sun returned, for the upper part of the sky was heavy with clouds, but things stood out sharply, even as the fog remained above our heads. Indeed, when we had gone some distance, I turned to look up at the top of the mountain and could no longer see anything. From the halfway point upward, the summit, the high plain, the Aedificium—everything had disappeared among the clouds.

The morning of our arrival, when we were already among the mountains, at certain bends it was still possible to view the sea, no more than ten miles away, perhaps even less. Our journey had been rich in surprises, because suddenly we would find ourselves on a kind of terrace in the mountain, which fell sharply down to beautiful bays, and then a little later we would enter deep chasms, where mountains rose among mountains, and one blocked from another the sight of the distant shore, while the sun could hardly force its way into the deep valleys. Never before had I seen, as I saw in that part of Italy, such narrow and sudden juttings of sea and mountains, of shores followed by alpine landscapes, and in the wind that whistled among the gorges you could catch the alternate conflict of the marine balms with icy mountain gusts.

That morning, however, all was gray, almost milky white, and there were no horizons even when the gorges opened out toward the distant shores. But I am dwelling on recollections of little interest as far as our story goes, my patient reader. So I will not narrate the ups and downs of our search for “der Teufel,” and I will tell, rather, of the legation of Friars Minor, which I was the first to sight. I ran at once to the monastery to inform William.

My master waited till the newcomers had entered and been greeted by the abbot according to the ritual. Then he went to meet the group, and there was a series of fraternal embraces and salutations.

The meal hour had already passed, but a table had been set for the guests, and the abbot thoughtfully left us among them; alone with William, exempted from the obligations of the Rule, they were free to eat and at the same time exchange their impressions. After all, it was, God forgive me the unpleasant simile, like a council of war, to be held as quickly as possible before the enemy host, namely the Avignon legation, could arrive.

Needless to say, the newcomers also promptly met Ubertino, whom all greeted with surprise, joy, veneration inspired not only by his long absence and by the fears surrounding his disappearance, but also by the qualities of that courageous warrior who for decades had fought their same battle.

Of the friars that made up the group I will speak later, when I tell about the next day’s meeting. For that matter, I talked very little with them at first, involved as I was in the three-man conference promptly established between William, Ubertino, and Michael of Cesena.

Michael must have been a truly strange man: most ardent in his Franciscan passion (he had at times the gestures, the accents of Ubertino in his moments of mystical transport); very human and jovial in his earthly nature, a man of the Romagna, capable of appreciating a good table and happy to be among his friends. Subtle and evasive, he could abruptly become sly and clever as a fox, elusive as a mole, when problems of relations among the mighty were touched upon; capable of great outbursts of laughter, fervid tensions, eloquent silences, deft in turning his gaze away from his interlocutor if the latter’s question required him to conceal, with what seemed absent-mindedness, his refusal to reply.

I have already spoken a bit about him in the preceding pages, and those were things I had heard said, perhaps by persons to whom they had been said. Now, on the other hand, I understood better many of his contradictory attitudes and the sudden changes of political strategy that in recent years had amazed his own friends and followers. Minister general of the order of the Friars Minor, he was in principle the heir of Saint Francis, and actually the heir of his interpreters: he had to compete with the sanctity and wisdom of such a predecessor as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio; he had to assure respect for the Rule and, at the same time, the fortunes of the order, so powerful and vast; he had to keep an eye on the courts and on the city magistrates from whom the order, though in the guise of alms, received gifts and bequests, source of prosperity and wealth; and at the same time he had to make sure that the requirement of penance did not lead the more ardent Spirituals to abandon the order, scattering that splendid community of which he was the head, in a constellation of bands of heretics. He had to please the Pope, the Emperor, the Friars of the Poor Life, and Saint Francis, who was certainly watching over him from heaven, as well as the Christian people, who were watching him from the earth. When John had condemned all Spirituals as heretics, Michael had not hesitated to hand over to him five of the most unruly friars of Provence, allowing the Pontiff to burn them at the stake. But realizing (and Ubertino may have had some share in this) that many in the order sympathized with the followers of evangelical simplicity, Michael had then acted in such a way that the chapter of Perugia, four years later, took up the demands of the burned men, naturally trying to reconcile a need, which could be heretical, with the ways and institutions of the order, and trying to harmonize the desires of the order and those of the Pope. But, as Michael was busy convincing the Pope, without whose consent he would have been unable to proceed, he had been willing also to accept the favors of the Emperor and the imperial theologians. Two years before the day I saw him he had yet enjoined his monks, in the chapter general of Lyons, to speak of the Pope’s person only with moderation and respect (and this was just a few months after the Pope, referring to the Minorites, had complained of “their yelping, their errors, their insanities”). But here he was at table, friendly, with persons who spoke of the Pope with less than no respect.

I have already told the rest of the story. John wanted him at Avignon. He himself wanted and did not want to go, and the next day’s meeting was to decide on the form and guarantees of a journey that should not appear as an act of submission or as an act of defiance. I don’t believe Michael had ever met John personally, at least not as pope. In any event, he hadn’t seen him for a long time, and Michael’s friends hastened to paint the portrait of that simoniac in the darkest hues.

“One thing you must learn,” William said to him, “is never to trust his oaths, which he always maintains to the letter, violating their substance.”

“Everyone knows,” Ubertino said, “what happened at the time of his election….”

“I wouldn’t call it an election, but an imposition!” one man at the table cried, a man I later heard them call Hugh of Newcastle, whose accent was similar to my master’s. “For that matter, the death of Clement the Fifth itself was never very clear. The King had never forgiven him for having promised to try Boniface the Eighth posthumously and then doing everything he could to avoid repudiating his predecessor. Nobody really knows how Clement died, at Carpentras. The fact is that when the cardinals met in Carpentras for the conclave, the new Pope didn’t materialize, because (quite rightly) the argument shifted to the choice between Avignon and Rome. I don’t know exactly what happened at that time—it was a massacre, I’m told—with the cardinals threatened by the nephew of the dead Pope, their servants slaughtered, the palace set afire, the cardinals appealing to the King, who says he never wanted the Pope to desert Rome and they should be patient and make a good choice…. Then Philip the Fair died, again God only knows how….”

“Or the Devil knows,” Ubertino said, blessing himself, in which he was imitated by all the others.

“Or the Devil knows,” Hugh agreed, with a sneer. “Anyway, another king succeeds, survives eighteen months, and dies. His newborn heir also dies in a few days’ time, and the regent, the King’s brother, assumes the throne….”

“And this is Philip the Fifth. The very one who, when he was still Count of Poitiers, stopped the cardinals who were fleeing from Carpentras,” Michael said.

“Yes,” Hugh went on. “He puts them again into conclave in Lyons, in the Dominicans’ convent, swearing he will defend their safety and not keep them prisoner. But once they place themselves in his power, he does not just have them locked up (which is the custom, after all), but every day reduces their food until they come to a decision. And each one promises to support his claim to the throne. When he does assume the throne, the cardinals are so weary of being prisoners after two years, and so afraid of staying there for the rest of their lives, eating badly, that they agree to everything, the gluttons, and on the throne of Peter they put that gnome, who is now over seventy….”

“Gnome, yes, true,” Ubertino said, laughing. “And rather consumptive-looking, but stronger and shrewder than anyone thought!”

“Son of a cobbler,” one of the legates grumbled.

“Christ was the son of a carpenter,” Ubertino reproached him. “That is not the point. He is a cultivated man, he studied law at Montpellier and medicine in Paris, he cultivated his friendships in the ways best suited to win the episcopal seats and the cardinal’s hat when it seemed opportune to him, and as counselor of Robert the Wise in Naples he amazed many with his acumen. When Bishop of Avignon, he gave all the right advice (right, that is, for the outcome of that squalid venture) to Philip the Fair about how to ruin the Templars. And after his election he managed to foil a plot of cardinals who wanted to kill him…. But this is not what I meant to talk about: I was speaking of his ability to betray vows without being accused of swearing falsely. To be elected, he promised Cardinal Orsini he would return the papal seat to Rome, and when he was elected he swore on the consecrated host that if he were not to keep his promise, he would never mount a horse or a mule again. Well, you know what that fox did? After he had himself crowned in Lyons (against the will of the King, who wanted the ceremony to take place in Avignon), he traveled from Lyons to Avignon by boat!”

The monks all laughed. The Pope was a perjurer, but there was no denying he had a certain ingeniousness.

“He is without shame,” William remarked. “Didn’t Hugh say that John made no attempt to conceal his bad faith? Haven’t you, Ubertino, told about what he said to Orsini on the day of his arrival in Avignon?”

“To be sure,” Ubertino said. “He said to him that the sky of France was so beautiful he could not see why he should set foot in a city full of ruins, like Rome. And inasmuch as the Pope, like Peter, had the power to bind and to loosen, he was now exercising this power: and he decided to remain where he was, where he enjoyed being. And when Orsini tried to remind him that it was his duty to live on the Vatican hill, he recalled him sharply to obedience and broke off the discussion. But I have not finished the story of the oath. On disembarking from the boat, John was to have mounted a white horse, to be followed by the cardinals on black horses, according to tradition. Instead he went to the episcopal palace on foot. Nor have I ever heard of his riding a horse again. And this is the man, Michael, you expect to abide by the guarantees he will give you?”

Michael remained silent for a long time. Then he said, “I can understand the Pope’s wish to remain in Avignon, and I will not dispute it. But he cannot dispute our desire for poverty and our interpretation of the example of Christ.”

“Don’t be ingenuous, Michael,” William spoke up, “your wishes, ours, make his appear sinister. You must realize that for centuries a greedier man has never ascended the papal throne. The whore of Babylon against whom our Ubertino used to fulminate, the corrupt popes described by the poets of your country like that Alighieri, were meek lambs and sober compared to John. He is a thieving magpie, a Jewish usurer; in Avignon there is more trafficking than in Florence! I have learned of the ignoble transaction with Clement’s nephew, Bertrand of Goth, he of the slaughter of Carpentras (during which, incidentally, the cardinals were relieved of all their jewels). He had laid his hands on his uncle’s treasure, which was no trifle, and John had not overlooked anything Bertrand had stolen: in the Cum venerabiles John lists precisely the coins, the gold and silver vessels, the books, rugs, precious stones, ornaments…. John, however, pretended not to know that Bertrand had seized more than a million and a half gold florins during the sack of Carpentras; he questioned another thirty thousand florins Bertrand confessed he had received from his uncle for a ‘pious cause,’ namely for a crusade. It was agreed that Bertrand would keep half the sum for the crusade and donate the other half to the papal throne. Then Bertrand never made the crusade, or at least he has not made it yet, and the Pope has not seen a florin….”

“He is not so clever, then,” Michael remarked.

“That was the only time he has been outwitted in a matter of money,” Ubertino said. “You must know well the kind of tradesman you will be dealing with. In every other situation he has displayed a diabolical skill in collecting money. He is a Midas: everything he touches becomes gold and flows into the coffers of Avignon. Whenever I entered his apartments I found bankers, moneychangers, and tables laden with gold, clerics counting florins and piling them neatly one on top of another…. And you will see the palace he has had built for himself, with riches that were once attributed only to the Emperor of Byzantium or the Great Khan of the Tartars. And now you understand why he issued all those bulls against the ideal of poverty. But do you know that he has driven the Dominicans, in their hatred of our order, to carve statues of Christ with a royal crown, a tunic of purple and gold, and sumptuous sandals? In Avignon they display crucifixes where Christ is nailed by a single hand while the other touches a purse hanging from his belt, to indicate that he authorizes the use of money for religious ends….”

“Oh, how shameless!” Michael cried. “But this is outright blasphemy!”

“He has added,” William went on, “a third crown to the papal tiara, hasn’t he, Ubertino?”

“Certainly. At the beginning of the millennium Pope Hildebrand had assumed one, with the legend ‘Corona regni de manu Dei’; the infamous Boniface later added a second, writing on it ‘Diadema imperii de manu Petri’; and John has simply perfected the symbol: three crowns, the spiritual power, the temporal, and the ecclesiastical. A symbol worthy of the Persian kings, a pagan symbol…”

There was one monk who till then had remained silent, busily and devoutly consuming the good dishes the abbot had sent to the table. With an absent eye he followed the various discussions, emitting every now and then a sarcastic laugh at the Pope’s expense, or a grunt of approval at the other monks’ indignant exclamations. But otherwise he was intent on wiping from his chin the juices and bits of meat that escaped his toothless but voracious mouth, and the only times he had spoken a word to one of his neighbors were to praise some delicacy. I learned later that he was Master Jerome, that Bishop of Kaffa whom, a few days before, Ubertino had thought dead. (I must add that the news of his death two years earlier continued to circulate as the truth throughout Christendom for a long time, because I also heard it afterward. Actually, he died a few months after that meeting of ours, and I still think he died of the great anger that filled him at the next day’s meeting; I would almost believe he exploded at once, so fragile was he of body and so bilious of humor.)

At this point he intervened in the discussion, speaking with his mouth full: “And then, you know, the villain issued a constitution concerning the taxae sacrae poenitentiariae in which he exploits the sins of religious in order to squeeze out more money. If an ecclesiastic commits a carnal sin, with a nun, with a relative, or even with an ordinary woman (because this also happens!), he can be absolved only by paying sixty-seven gold pieces and twelve pence. And if he commits bestiality, it is more than two hundred pieces, but if he has committed it only with youths or animals, and not with females, the fine is reduced by one hundred. And a nun who has given herself to many men, either all at once or at different times, inside the convent or out, if she then wants to become abbess, must pay one hundred thirty-one gold pieces and fifteen pence….”

“Come, come, Messer Jerome,” Ubertino protested, “you know how little I love the Pope, but on this point I must defend him! It is a slander circulated in Avignon. I have never seen this constitution!”

“It exists,” Jerome declared vigorously. “I have not seen it, either, but it exists.”

Ubertino shook his head, and the others fell silent. I realized they were accustomed to not paying great heed to Master Jerome, whom William had called a fool the other day. William tried to resume the conversation: “In any case, true or false as it may be, this rumor tells us the moral climate of Avignon, where all, exploited and exploiters, know they are living more in a market than at the court of Christ’s vicar. When John ascended the throne there was talk of a treasure of seventy thousand florins and now there are those who say he has amassed more than ten million.”

“It is true,” Ubertino said. “Ah, Michael, Michael, you have no idea of the shameful things I had to see in Avignon!”

“Let us try to be honest,” Michael said. “We know that our own people have also committed excesses. I have been told of Franciscans who made armed attacks on Dominican convents and despoiled their rival monks to impose poverty on them…. This is why I dared not oppose John at the time of the events in Provence…. I want to come to an agreement with him; I will not humiliate his pride, I will only ask him not to humiliate our humility. I will not speak to him of money, I will ask him only to agree to a sound interpretation of Scripture. And this is what we must do with his envoys tomorrow. After all, they are men of theology, and not all will be greedy like John. When some wise men have determined an interpretation of Scripture, he will not be able to—”

“He?” Ubertino interrupted him. “Why, you do not yet know his follies in the field of theology! He really wants to bind everything with his own hand, on earth and in heaven. On earth we have seen what he does. As for heaven … Well, he has not yet expressed the ideas I cannot divulge to you—not publicly, at least—but I know for certain that he has whispered them to his henchmen. He is planning some mad if not perverse propositions that would change the very substance of doctrine and would deprive our preaching of all power!”

“What are they?” many asked.

“Ask Berengar; he knows, he told me of them.” Ubertino had turned to Berengar Talloni, who over the past years had been one of the most determined adversaries of the Pope at his own court. Having come from Avignon, he had joined the group of the other Franciscans two days earlier and had arrived at the abbey with them.

“It is a murky and almost incredible story,” Berengar said. “It seems John is planning to declare that the just will not enjoy the beatific vision until after judgment. For some time he has been reflecting on the ninth verse of the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse, where the opening of the fifth seal is discussed, where under the altar appear those who were slain for testifying to the word of God and who ask for justice. To each is given a white robe, and they are told to be patient a little longer…. A sign, John argues, that they will not be able to see God in his essence until the last judgment is fulfilled.”

“To whom has he said these things?” Michael asked, horrified.

“So far only to a few intimates, but word has spread; they say he is preparing an open declaration, not immediately, perhaps in a few years. He is consulting his theologians….”

“Ha ha!” Jerome sneered as he ate.

“And, more, it seems that he wants to go further and assert that nor will hell be open before that day … not even for the devils!”

“Lord Jesus, assist us!” Jerome cried. “And what will we tell sinners, then, if we cannot threaten them with an immediate hell the moment they are dead?”

“We are in the hands of a madman,” Ubertino said. “But I do not understand why he wants to assert these things….”

“The whole doctrine of indulgences goes up in smoke,” Jerome complained, “and not even he will be able to sell any after that. Why should a priest who has committed the sin of bestiality pay so many gold pieces to avoid such a remote punishment?”

“Not so remote,” Ubertino said firmly. “The hour is at hand!”

“You know that, dear brother, but the simple do not know it. This is how things stand!” cried Jerome, who no longer seemed to be enjoying his food. “What an evil idea; those preaching friars must have put it into his mind…. Ah!” And he shook his head.

“But why?” Michael of Cesena returned to this question.

“I don’t believe there’s a reason,” William said. “It’s a test he allows himself, an act of pride. He wants to be truly the one who decides for heaven and earth. I knew of these whisperings—William of Occam had written me. We shall see in the end whether the Pope has his way or the theologians have theirs, the voice of the whole church, the very wishes of the people of God, the bishops….”

“Oh, on doctrinal matters he can bend even the theologians to his will,” Michael said sadly.

“Not necessarily,” William replied. “We live in times when those learned in divine things have no fear of proclaiming the Pope a heretic. Those learned in divine things are in their way the voice of the Christian people. And not even the Pope can set himself against them now.”

“Worse, still worse,” Michael murmured, frightened. “On one side a mad pope, on the other the people of God, who, even if through the words of His theologians, will soon claim to interpret Scripture freely….”

“Why? Was what your people in Perugia did any different?” William asked.

Michael reacted as if stung. “That is why I want to meet the Pope. We can do nothing if he is not in agreement.”

“We shall see, we shall see,” William said in an enigmatic tone.

My master was truly very sharp. How could he foresee that Michael himself would later decide to support the theologians of the empire and to support the people in condemning the Pope? How could William foresee that, in four years’ time, when John was first to pronounce his incredible doctrine, there would be an uprising on the part of all Christianity? If the beatific vision was thus postponed, how could the dead intercede for the living? And what would become of the cult of the saints? It was the Minorites themselves who would open hostilities in condemning the Pope, and William of Occam would be in the front rank, stern and implacable in his arguments. The conflict was to last for three years, until John, close to death, made partial amends. I heard him described, years later, as he appeared in the consistory of December 1334, smaller than he had seemed previously, withered by age, eighty-five years old and dying, his face pale, and he was to say (the fox, so clever in playing on words not only to break his own oaths but also to deny his own stubbornness): “We confess and believe that the souls separated from the body and completely purified are in heaven, in paradise with the angels, and with Jesus Christ, and that they see God in His divine essence, clearly, face to face…” and then, after a pause—it was never known whether this was due to his difficulty in breathing or to his perverse desire to underline the last clause as adversative—”to the extent to which the state and condition of the separated soul allows it.” The next morning, a Sunday, he had himself laid on a long chair with reclining back, and he received the cardinals, who kissed his hand, and he died.

But again I digress, and tell things other than those I should tell. Yet, after all, the rest of that conversation at table does not add much to the understanding of the events I am narrating. The Minorites agreed on the stand to be taken the next day. They sized up their adversaries one by one. They commented with concern on the news, announced by William, of the arrival of Bernard Gui. And even more on the fact that Cardinal Bertrand del Poggetto would be presiding over the Avignon legation. Two inquisitors were too many: a sign they planned to use the argument of heresy against the Minorites.

“So much the worse,” William said. “We will treat them as heretics.”

“No, no,” Michael said, “let us proceed cautiously; we must not jeopardize any possible agreement.”

“As far as I can see,” William said, “though I also worked for the realization of this meeting, and you know it, Michael, I do not believe the Avignonese are coming here to achieve any positive result. John wants you at Avignon alone, and without guarantees. But the meeting will have at least one function: to make you understand that. It would have been worse if you had gone there before having had this experience.”

“And so you have worked hard, and for many months, to bring about something you believe futile,” Michael said bitterly.

“I was asked to, by the Emperor and by you,” William said. “And ultimately it is never a futile thing to know one’s enemies better.”

At this point they came to tell us that the second delegation was coming inside the walls. The Minorites rose and went out to meet the Pope’s men.

NONES

In which Cardinal del Poggetto arrives, with Bernard Gui and the other men of Avignon, and then each one does something different.

Men who had already known one another for some time, men who without knowing one another had each heard the others spoken of, exchanged greetings in the courtyard with apparent meekness. At the abbot’s side, Cardinal Bertrand del Poggetto moved like a man accustomed to power, as if he were virtually a second pope himself, and to one and all, especially to the Minorites, he distributed cordial smiles, auguring splendid agreement for the next day’s meeting and bearing explicit wishes for peace and good (he used deliberately this expression dear to the Franciscans) from John XXII.

“Excellent,” he said to me, when William was kind enough to introduce me as his scribe and pupil. Then he asked me whether I knew Bologna and he praised its beauty to me, its good food and its splendid university, inviting me to visit the city, rather than return one day, as he said, among those German people of mine who were making our lord Pope suffer so much. Then he extended his ring for me to kiss, as he directed his smile at someone else.

For that matter, my attention immediately turned to the person of whom I had heard most talk recently: Bernard Gui, as the French called him, or Bernardo Guidoni or Bernardo Guido, as he was called elsewhere.

He was a Dominican of about seventy, slender and erect. I was struck by his gray eyes, capable of staring without any expression; I was to see them often flash with ambiguous light, shrewd both in concealing thoughts and passions and in deliberately conveying them.

In the general exchange of greetings, he was not affectionate or cordial like the others, but always and just barely polite. When he saw Ubertino, whom he already knew, he was very deferential, but stared at him in a way that gave me an uneasy shudder. When he greeted Michael of Cesena, his smile was hard to decipher, and he murmured without warmth, “You have been awaited there for some time,” a sentence in which I was unable to catch either a hint of eagerness or a shadow of irony, either an injunction or, for that matter, a suggestion of interest. He met William, and when he learned who he was, he looked at him with polite hostility: not because his face betrayed his secret feelings, I was sure of that (even while I was unsure that he harbored any feelings at all), but because he certainly wanted William to feel he was hostile. William returned his hostility, smiling at him with exaggerated cordiality and saying, “For some time I have been wanting to meet a man whose fame has been a lesson to me and an admonition for many important decisions that have inspired my life.” Certainly words of praise, almost of flattery, for anyone who did not know, as Bernard did know well, that one of the most important decisions in William’s life had been to abandon the position of inquisitor. I derived the impression that, if William would gladly have seen Bernard in some imperial dungeon, Bernard certainly would have been pleased to see William suddenly seized by accidental and immediate death; and since Bernard in those days had men-at-arms under his command, I feared for my good master’s life.

Bernard must already have been informed by the abbot of the crimes committed in the abbey. In fact, pretending to ignore the venom in William’s words, he said to him, “It seems that now, at the abbot’s request, and in order to fulfill the mission entrusted to me under the terms of the agreement that has united us all here, I must concern myself with some very sad events in which the pestiferous stink of the Devil is evident. I mention this to you because I know that in remote times, when you would have been closer to me, you fought as did I—and those like me—in that field where the forces of good are arrayed against the forces of evil.”

“True,” William said calmly, “but then I went over to the other side.”

Bernard took the blow well. “Can you tell me anything helpful about these criminal deeds?”

“No, unfortunately,” William answered with civility. “I do not have your experience of criminal deeds.”

From that moment on I lost track of everyone. William, after another conversation with Michael and Ubertino, withdrew to the scriptorium. He asked Malachi’s leave to examine certain books, but I was unable to hear the titles. Malachi looked at him oddly but could not deny permission. Strangely, they did not have to be sought in the library. They were already on Venantius’s desk, all of them. My master immersed himself in his reading, and I decided not to disturb him.

I went down into the kitchen. There I saw Bernard Gui. He probably wanted to comprehend the layout of the abbey and was roaming about everywhere. I heard him interrogating the cooks and other servants, speaking the local vernacular after a fashion (I recalled that he had been inquisitor in northern Italy). He seemed to be asking for information about the harvest, the organization of work in the monastery. But even while asking the most innocuous questions, he would look at his companion with penetrating eyes, then would abruptly ask another question, and at this point his victim would blanch and stammer. I concluded that, in some singular way, he was carrying out an inquisition, and was exploiting a formidable weapon that every inquisitor, in the performance of his function, possesses and employs: the fear of others. For every person, when questioned, usually tells the inquisitor, out of fear of being suspected of something, whatever may serve to make somebody else suspect.

For all the rest of the afternoon, as I gradually moved about, I saw Bernard proceed in this fashion, whether by the mills or in the cloister. But he almost never confronted monks: always lay brothers or peasants. The opposite of William’s strategy thus far.

VESPERS

In which Alinardo seems to give valuable information, and William reveals his method of arriving at a probable truth through a series of unquestionable errors.

Later William descended from the scriptorium in good humor. While we were waiting for suppertime, we came upon Alinardo in the cloister. Remembering his request, I had procured some chickpeas the day before in the kitchen, and I offered them to him. He thanked me, stuffing them into his toothless, drooling mouth. “You see, boy?” he said. “The other corpse also lay where the book announced it would be…. Now wait for the fourth trumpet!”

I asked him why he thought the key to the sequence of crimes lay in the book of Revelation. He looked at me, amazed: “The book of John offers the key to everything!” And he added, with a grimace of bitterness, “I knew it, I’ve been saying as much for a long time…. I was the one, you know, to suggest to the abbot … the one we had then … to collect as many commentaries on the Apocalypse as possible. I was to have become librarian…. But then the other one managed to have himself sent to Silos, where he found the finest manuscripts, and he came back with splendid booty…. Oh, he knew where to look; he also spoke the language of the infidels…. And so the library was given into his keeping, and not mine. But God punished him, and sent him into the realm of darkness before his time. Ha ha…” He laughed in a nasty way, that old man who until then, lost in the serenity of his old age, had seemed to me like an innocent child.

“Who was the monk you were speaking of?” William asked.

He looked at us, stunned. “Whom was I speaking of? I cannot remember … it was such a long time ago. But God punishes, God nullifies, God dims even memories. Many acts of pride were committed in the library. Especially after it fell into the hands of foreigners. God punishes still….”

We could get no more out of him, and we left him to his calm, embittered delirium. William declared himself very interested in that exchange: “Alinardo is a man to listen to; each time he speaks he says something interesting.”

“What did he say this time?”

“Adso,” William said, “solving a mystery is not the same as deducing from first principles. Nor does it amount simply to collecting a number of particular data from which to infer a general law. It means, rather, facing one or two or three particular data apparently with nothing in common, and trying to imagine whether they could represent so many instances of a general law you don’t yet know, and which perhaps has never been pronounced. To be sure, if you know, as the philosopher says, that man, the horse, and the mule are all without bile and are all long-lived, you can venture the principle that animals without bile live a long time. But take the case of animals with horns. Why do they have horns? Suddenly you realize that all animals with horns are without teeth in the upper jaw. This would be a fine discovery, if you did not also realize that, alas, there are animals without teeth in the upper jaw who, however, do not have horns: the camel, to name one. And finally you realize that all animals without teeth in the upper jaw have four stomachs. Well, then, you can suppose that one who cannot chew well must need four stomachs to digest food better. But what about the horns? You then try to imagine a material cause for horns—say, the lack of teeth provides the animal with an excess of osseous matter that must emerge somewhere else. But is that sufficient explanation? No, because the camel has no upper teeth, has four stomachs, but does not have horns. And you must also imagine a final cause. The osseous matter emerges in horns only in animals without other means of defense. But the camel has a very tough hide and doesn’t need horns. So the law could be…”

“But what have horns to do with anything?” I asked impatiently. “And why are you concerned with animals having horns?”

“I have never concerned myself with them, but the Bishop of Lincoln was greatly interested in them, pursuing an idea of Aristotle. Honestly, I don’t know whether his conclusions are the right ones, nor have I ever checked to see where the camel’s teeth are or how many stomachs he has. I was trying to tell you that the search for explicative laws in natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. In the face of some inexplicable facts you must try to imagine many general laws, whose connection with your facts escapes you. Then suddenly, in the unexpected connection of a result, a specific situation, and one of those laws, you perceive a line of reasoning that seems more convincing than the others. You try applying it to all similar cases, to use it for making predictions, and you discover that your intuition was right. But until you reach the end you will never know which predicates to introduce into your reasoning and which to omit. And this is what I am doing now. I line up so many disjointed elements and I venture some hypotheses. I have to venture many, and many of them are so absurd that I would be ashamed to tell them to you. You see, in the case of the horse Brunellus, when I saw the clues I guessed many complementary and contradictory hypotheses: it could be a runaway horse, it could be that the abbot had ridden down the slope on that fine horse, it could be that one horse, Brunellus, had left the tracks in the snow and another horse, Favellus, the day before, the traces of mane in the bush, and the branches could have been broken by some men. I didn’t know which hypothesis was right until I saw the cellarer and the servants anxiously searching. Then I understood that the Brunellus hypothesis was the only right one, and I tried to prove it true, addressing the monks as I did. I won, but I might also have lost. The others believed me wise because I won, but they didn’t know the many instances in which I have been foolish because I lost, and they didn’t know that a few seconds before winning I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t lose. Now, for the events of the abbey I have many fine hypotheses, but there is no evident fact that allows me to say which is best. So, rather than appear foolish afterward, I renounce seeming clever now. Let me think no more, until tomorrow at least.”

I understood at that moment my master’s method of reasoning, and it seemed to me quite alien to that of the philosopher, who reasons by first principles, so that his intellect almost assumes the ways of the divine intellect. I understood that, when he didn’t have an answer, William proposed many to himself, very different one from another. I remained puzzled.

“But then…” I ventured to remark, “you are still far from the solution….”

“I am very close to one,” William said, “but I don’t know which.”

“Therefore you don’t have a single answer to your questions?”

“Adso, if I did I would teach theology in Paris.”

“In Paris do they always have the true answer?”

“Never,” William said, “but they are very sure of their errors.”

“And you,” I said with childish impertinence, “never commit errors?”

“Often,” he answered. “But instead of conceiving only one, I imagine many, so I become the slave of none.”

I had the impression that William was not at all interested in the truth, which is nothing but the adjustment between the thing and the intellect. On the contrary, he amused himself by imagining how many possibilities were possible.

At that moment, I confess, I despaired of my master and caught myself thinking, “Good thing the inquisitor has come.” I was on the side of that thirst for truth that inspired Bernard Gui.

And in this culpable mood, more torn than Judas on the night of Holy Thursday, I went with William into the refectory to eat my supper.

COMPLINE

In which Salvatore tells of a prodigious spell.

The supper for the legation was superb. The abbot must have known well both human weaknesses and the customs of the papal court (which, I must say, did not displease Brother Michael’s Minorites, either). The freshly slaughtered pigs were to have produced blood pudding according to the Monte Cassino recipe, the cook had told us. But Venantius’s wretched end had obliged them to throw away all the pigs’ blood, though they would eventually slaughter some more pigs. I believe that in those days everyone abhorred the idea of killing the Lord’s creatures. Nevertheless, we had a ragout of pigeon, marinaded in the wine of those lands, and roast rabbit, Saint Clare’s pasties, rice with the almonds of those hills—the blancmange of fast days, that is—and borage tarts, stuffed olives, fried cheese, mutton with a sauce of raw peppers, white broad beans, and exquisite sweets, Saint Bernard’s cake, Saint Nicholas’s pies, Saint Lucy’s dumplings, and wines, and herb liqueurs that put everyone in a good humor, even Bernard Gui, usually so austere: an elixir of lemon verbena, walnut wine, wine against the gout, and gentian wine. It seemed an assembly of gluttons, except that every sip or every morsel was accompanied by devotional readings.

In the end, all rose very happy, some mentioning vague ailments as an excuse not to go down to compline. But the abbot did not take offense. Not all have the privilege and the obligations we assume on being consecrated in our order.

As the monks departed, my curiosity made me linger in the kitchen, where they were preparing to lock up for the night. I saw Salvatore slip off toward the garden with a bundle under his arm. My curiosity still further aroused, I followed and called him. He tried to evade me, but when I questioned him he replied that in the bundle (which moved as if inhabited by something alive) he was carrying a basilisk.

“Cave basilischium! The rex of serpenti, tant pleno of poison that it all shines dehors! Che dicam, il veleno, even the stink comes dehors and kills you! Poisons you … And it has black spots on his back, and a head like a coq, and half goes erect over the terra, and half on the terra like the other serpents. And it kills the bellula….”

“The bellula?”

“Oc! Parvissimum animal, just a bit plus longue than the rat, and also called the musk-rat. And so the serpe and the botta. And when they bite it, the bellula runs to the fenicula or to the cicerbita and chews it, and comes back to the battaglia. And they say it generates through the oculi, but most say they are wrong.”

I asked him what he was doing with a basilisk and he said that was his business. Now completely overwhelmed by curiosity, I said that these days, with all the deaths, there could be no more secret matters, and I would tell William. Then Salvatore ardently begged me to remain silent, opened the bundle, and showed me a black cat. He drew me closer and, with an obscene smile, said that he didn’t want the cellarer, who was powerful, or me, young and handsome, to enjoy the love of the village girls any more, when he couldn’t because he was ugly and a poor wretch. But he knew a prodigious spell that would make every woman succumb to love. You had to kill a black cat and dig out its eyes, then put them in two eggs of a black hen, one eye in one egg, one eye in the other (and he showed me two eggs that he swore he had taken from appropriate hens). Then you had to let the eggs rot in a pile of horse dung (and he had one ready in a corner of the vegetable garden where nobody ever went), and there a little devil would be born from each egg, and would then be at your service, procuring for you all the delights of this world. But, alas, he told me, for the magic spell to work, the woman whose love he wanted had to spit on the eggs before they were buried in the dung, and that problem tormented him, because he would have to have the woman in question at hand that night, and make her perform the ritual without knowing its purpose.

A sudden heat seized me. in the face, or the viscera, or in my whole body, and I asked in a faint voice whether that night he would bring the same girl within the walls. He laughed, mocking me, and said I was truly gripped by a great lust (I said not, that I was asking out of pure curiosity), and then he said there were plenty of women in the village, and he would bring up another, even more beautiful than the one I liked. I supposed he was lying to me to make me go away. And in any case what could I have done? Follow him all night, when William was awaiting me for quite different enterprises? And again see her (if it was she) toward whom my appetites drove me while my reason drove me away—and whom I should never see again even though I did desire to see her further? Surely not. So I persuaded myself that Salvatore was telling the truth, as far as the woman was concerned. Or perhaps he was lying about everything, and the spell he described was a fantasy of his naive, superstitious mind, and he would not do anything.

I became irritated with him, treated him roughly, told him that for that night he would do better to go to bed, because archers were patrolling the abbey. He answered that he knew the abbey better than the archers did, and with this fog nobody would see anybody. Indeed, he said to me, I’m going to run off now, and you won’t see me any more, even if I were two feet away having my pleasure with the girl you desire. He expressed himself with different words, but this was the meaning of what he said. I left, indignant, because it was unworthy of me, nobleman and novice, to dispute with such rabble.

I joined William and we did what was to be done. That is, we prepared to follow compline at the rear of the nave, so that when the office ended we would be ready to undertake our second (for me, third) journey into the bowels of the labyrinth.

AFTER COMPLINE

In which they visit the labyrinth again, reach the threshold of the finis Africae, but cannot enter because they do not know what the first and seventh of the four are, and, finally, Adso has a recurrence, though a very erudite one, of his love malady.

The visit to the library cost us long hours of work. Described in words, the verification we aimed to carry out was simple, but our progress by lamplight as we read the legends, marked the passages and the blank walls on the map, recorded the initials, followed the various routes that the play of openings and obstacles allowed us, was very long. And tedious.

It was bitter cold. The night was not windy and we did not hear those faint whistlings that had upset us the first evening, but a damp, icy air entered from the arrow slits. We had put on woolen gloves so as to be able to touch the volumes without having our hands become numb. But they were the kind used for writing in winter, the fingertips left bare, and sometimes we had to hold our hands to the flame or put them against our chests or clap them as we hopped about, half frozen.

For this reason we didn’t perform the whole task consecutively. We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William—with his new glasses on his nose—could linger and read the books, at every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness, either because he knew the work, or because he had been seeking it for a long time, or finally because he had never heard it mentioned and was highly excited and titillated. In short, for him every book was like a fabulous animal that he was meeting in a strange land. And as he leafed through one manuscript, he ordered me to look for others.

“See what’s in that case!”

And I, deciphering and shifting volumes, said, “Historia anglorum of Bede … And also by Bede, De aedificatione templi, De tabernaculo, De temporibus et computo et chronica et circuli Dionysi, Ortographia, De ratione metrorum, Vita Sancti Cuthberti, Ars metrica…“

“Naturally, the complete works of the Venerable … And look at these! De rhetorica cognatione, Locorum rhetoricorum distinction and here many grammarians, Priscian, Honoratus, Donatus, Maximus, Victorinus, Eutiches, Phocas, Asper … Odd, I thought at first that here there were authors from Anglia…. Let us look below….”

“Hisperica … famina. What is that?”

“A Hibernian poem. Listen:

Hoc spumans mundanas obvallat Pelagus oras

terrestres amniosis fluctibus cudit margines.
Saxeas undosis molibus irruit avionias.
Infima bomboso vertice miscet glareas
asprifero spergit spumas sulco,
sonoreis frequenter quatitur flabris….”

I didn’t understand the meaning, but as William read he rolled the words in his mouth so that you seemed to hear the sound of the waves and the sea foam.

“And this? Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Listen to this page: ‘Primi-tus pantorum procerum poematorum pio potissimum paternoque presertim privilegio panegiricum poemataque passim prosatori sub polo promulgatas.’… The words all begin with the same letter!”

“The men of my islands are all a bit mad,” William said proudly. “Let us look in the other case.”

“Virgil.”

“What is he doing here? What Virgil? The Georgics?“

“No. Epitomae. I’ve never heard of it.”

“But it’s Virgil of Toulouse, the rhetorician, six centuries after the birth of our Lord. He was considered a great sage….”

“Here it says that the arts are poema, rethoria, grama, leporia, dialecta, geometria…. But what language was he writing?”

“Latin. A Latin of his own invention, however, which he considered far more beautiful. Read this; he says that astronomy studies the signs of the zodiac, which are mon, man, tonte, piron, dameth, perfellea, belgalic, margaleth, lutamiron, taminon, and raphalut.”

“Was he crazy?”

“I don’t know: he didn’t come from my islands. And listen to this; he says there are twelve ways of designating fire: ignis, coqui-habin (quia incocta coquendi habet dictionem), ardo, calax ex calore, fragon ex fragore flammae, rusin de rubore, fumaton, ustrax de urendo, vitius quia pene mortua membra suo vivificat, siluleus, quod de silice siliat, unde et silex non recte dicitur, nisi ex qua scintilla silit. And aeneon, de Aenea deo, qui in eo habitat, sive a quo elementis flatus fertur.”

“But there’s no one who speaks like that!”

“Happily. But those were times when, to forget an evil world, grammarians took pleasure in abstruse questions. I was told that in that period, for fifteen days and fifteen nights, the rhetoricians Gabundus and Terentius argued on the vocative of ‘ego,’ and in the end they attacked each other, with weapons.”

“But this, too. Listen….” I had grasped a book marvelously illuminated with vegetable labyrinths from which monkeys and serpents peered out. “Listen to these words: cantamen, collamen, gongelamen, stemiamen, plasmamem, sonerus, alboreus, gaudifluus, glaucicomus….”

“My islands,” William said again, with tenderness. “Don’t be too harsh with those monks of far-off Hibernia. Perhaps, if this abbey exists and if we still speak of the Holy Roman Empire, we owe it to them. At that time, the rest of Europe was reduced to a heap of ruins; one day they declared invalid all baptisms imparted by certain priests in Gaul because they baptized “in nomine patris et filiae’—and not because they practiced a new heresy and considered Jesus a woman, but because they no longer knew any Latin.”

“Like Salvatore?”

“More or less. Vikings from the Far North came down along the rivers to sack Rome. The pagan temples were falling in ruins, and the Christian ones did not yet exist. It was only the monks of Hibernia in their monasteries who wrote and read, read and wrote, and illuminated, and then jumped into little boats made of animal hide and navigated toward these lands and evangelized them as if you people were infidels, you understand? You have been to Bobbio, which was founded by Saint Columba, one of them. And so never mind if they invented a new Latin, seeing that in Europe no one knew the old Latin any more. They were great men. Saint Brendan reached the Isles of the Blest and sailed along the coasts of hell, where he saw Judas chained to a rock, and one day he landed on an island and went ashore there and found a sea monster. Naturally they were all mad,” he repeated contentedly.

“These images are … I can hardly believe my eyes! So many colors!” I said, drinking it all in.

“From a land that doesn’t have many colors, a bit of blue and much green. But we mustn’t stand here discussing Hibernian monks. What I want to know is why they are here with the Anglians and with grammarians of other countries. Look at your chart; where should we be?”

“In the rooms of the west tower. I’ve copied down the scrolls, too. So, then, leaving the blind room, we enter the heptagonal room, and there is only one passage to a single room of the tower; the letter in red is H. Then we go from room to room, moving around the tower, and we return to the blind room. The sequence of the letters spells … you are right! HIBERNI!”

“HIBERNIA, if we come from the blind room back into the heptagonal, which, like all the others, has the letter A for Apocalypsis. So there are the works of the authors of Ultima Thule, and also the grammarians and rhetoricians, because the men who arranged the library thought that a grammarian should remain with the Hibernian grammarians, even if he came from Toulouse. It is a criterion. You see? We are beginning to understand something.”

“But in the rooms of the east tower, where we came in, we read fons…. What does that mean?”

“Read your map carefully. Keep reading the letters of the rooms that follow, in order of access.”

“FONS ADAEU…”

“No, Fons Adae; the U is the second east blind room, I remember it; perhaps it fits into another sequence. And what did we find in the Fons Adae, that is, in the earthly paradise (remember that the room with the altar facing the rising sun is there)?”

“There were many Bibles there, and commentaries on the Bible, only books of Holy Scripture.”

“And so, you see, the word of God corresponding to the earthly paradise, which as all say is far off to the east. And here, to the west: Hibernia.”

“So the plan of the library reproduces the map of the world?”

“That’s probable. And the books are arranged according to the country of their origin, or the place where their authors were born, or, as in this instance, the place where they should have been born. The librarians told themselves Virgil the grammarian was born in Toulouse by mistake; he should have been born in the western islands. They corrected the errors of nature.”

We resumed our way. We passed through a series of rooms rich in splendid Apocalypses, and one of these was the room where I had had visions. Indeed, we saw the light again from afar. William held his nose and ran to put it out, spitting on the ash. To be on the safe side, we hurried through the room, but I recalled that I had seen there the beautiful, many-colored Apocalypse with the mulier amicta sole and the dragon. We reconstructed the sequence of these rooms, starting from the one we entered last, which had Y as its red initial. Reading backward gave us the word YSPANIA, but its final A was also the one that concluded HIBERNIA. A sign, William said, that there were some rooms in which works of mixed nature were housed.

In any case, the area denominated YSPANIA seemed to us populated with many codices of the Apocalypse, all splendidly made, which William recognized as Hispanic art. We perceived that the library had perhaps the largest collection of copies of the apostle’s book extant in Christendom, and an immense quantity of commentaries on the text. Enormous volumes were devoted to the commentary of the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana. The text was more or less always the same, but we found a rich, fantastic variation in the images, and William recognized some of those he considered among the greatest illuminators of the realm of the Asturias: Magius, Facundus, and others.

As we made these and other observations, we arrived at the south tower, which we had already approached the night before. The S room of Yspania—windowless—led into an E room, and after we gradually went around the five rooms of the tower, we came to the last, without other passages, which bore a red L. Again reading backward, we found LEONES.

“Leones: south. On our map we are in Africa, hie sunt leones. And this explains why we have found so many texts by infidel authors.”

And there are more, I said, rummaging in the cases. Canon of Avicenna, and this codex with the beautiful calligraphy I don’t recognize…

From the decorations I would say it is a Koran, but unfortunately I have no Arabic.

The Koran, the Bible of the infidels, a perverse book…

A book containing a wisdom different from ours. But you understand why they put it here, where the lions, the monsters, are. This is why we saw that book on the monstrous animals, where you also found the unicorn. This area called leones contains the books that the creators of the library considered books of falsehood. What’s over there?

They’re in Latin, but from the Arabic. Ayyub al-Ruhawi, a treatise on canine hydrophobia. And this is a book of treasures. And this is De aspectibus of Alhazen….

You see, among monsters and falsehoods they have also placed works of science from which Christians have much to learn. That was the way they thought in the times when the library was built….

But why have they also put a book with the unicorn among the falsehoods? I asked.

Obviously the founders of the library had strange ideas. They must have believed that this book which speaks of fantastic animals and beasts living in distant lands was part of the catalogue of falsehoods spread by the infidels….

But is the unicorn a falsehood? It’s the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ, and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters’ snares.

So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it’s a fable, an invention of the pagans.

What a disappointment, I said. I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what’s the pleasure of crossing a wood?

It’s not certain the animal doesn’t exist. Perhaps it’s different from the way it’s illustrated in these books. A Venetian traveler went to very distant lands, quite close to the fons paradisi of which maps tell, and he saw unicorns. But he found them rough and clumsy, and very ugly and black. I believe he saw a real animal with one horn on its brow. It was probably the same animal the ancient masters first described faithfully. They were never completely mistaken, and had received from God the opportunity to see things we haven’t seen. Then this description, passing from auctoritas to auctoritas, was transformed through successive imaginative exercises, and unicorns became fanciful animals, white and gentle. So if you hear there’s a unicorn in a wood, don’t go there with a virgin: the animal might resemble more closely the Venetian’s account than the description in this book.

But did the ancient masters happen to receive from God the revelation of the unicorn’s true nature?

Not the revelation: the experience. They were fortunate enough to be born in lands where unicorns live, or in times when unicorns lived in our own lands.

But then how can we trust ancient wisdom, whose traces you are always seeking, if it is handed down by lying books that have interpreted it with such license?

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind. The unicorn, as these books speak of him, embodies a moral truth, or allegorical, or analogical, but one that remains true, as the idea that chastity is a noble virtue remains true. But as for the literal truth that sustains the other three truths, we have yet to see what original experience gave birth to the letter. The literal object must be discussed, even if its higher meaning remains good. In a book it is written that diamond can be cut only with a billy goat’s blood. My great master Roger Bacon said it was not true, simply because he had tried and had failed. But if the relation between a diamond and goat’s blood had had a nobler meaning, that would have remained intact.

Then higher truths can be expressed while the letter is lying, I said. Still, it grieves me to think this unicorn doesn’t exist, or never existed, or cannot exist one day.

It is not licit to impose confines on divine omnipotence, and if God so willed, unicorns could also exist. But console yourself, they exist in these books, which, if they do not speak of real existence, speak of possible existence.

So must we then read books without faith, which is a theological virtue?

There are two other theological virtues as well. The hope that the possible is. And charity, toward those who believed in good faith that the possible was.

But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn’t believe in it?

It is of use to me as Venantius’s prints in the snow were of use, after he was dragged to the pigs’ tub. The unicorn of the books is like a print. If the print exists, there must have existed something whose print it is.

But different from the print, you say.

Of course. The print does not always have the same shape as the body that impressed it, and it doesn’t always derive from the pressure of a body. At times it reproduces the impression a body has left in our mind: it is the print of an idea. The idea is sign of things, and the image is sign of the idea, sign of a sign. But from the image I reconstruct, if not the body, the idea that others had of it.

And this is enough for you?

No, because true learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth. And so I would like to go back from this print of a print to the individual unicorn that stands at the beginning of the chain. As I would like to go back from the vague signs left by Venantius’s murderer (signs that could refer to many) to a sole individual, the murderer himself. But it isn’t always possible in a short time, and without the help of other signs.

Then I can always and only speak of something that speaks to me of something else, and so on. But the final something, the true one—does that never exist?

Perhaps it does: it is the individual unicorn. And don’t worry: one of these days you will encounter it, however black and ugly it may be.

Unicorns, lions, Arab authors, and Moors in general, I said at that point, no doubt this is the Africa of which the monks spoke.

No doubt this is it. And if it is, we should find the African poets mentioned by Pacificus of Tivoli.

And, in fact, when we had retraced our steps and were in room L again, we found in a case a collection of books by Floro, Fronto, Apuleius, Martianus Capella, and Fulgentius.

So this is where Berengar said the explanations of a certain secret should be, I said.

Almost here. He used the expression ‘finis Africae,’ and this was the expression that so infuriated Malachi. The finis could be this last room, unless… He cried out: By the seven churches of Clonmacnois! Haven’t you noticed something?

What?

Let’s go back to room S, where we started!

We went back to the first blind room, where the verse read Super thronos viginti quatuor. It had four openings. One led to room Y, which had a window on the inner octagon. Another led to room P, which continued, along the outside façade, the YSPANIA sequence. The opening toward the tower led into room E, which we had just come through. Then there was a blank wall, and finally an opening that led into a second blind room with the initial U. Room S was the one with the mirror—luckily on the wall immediately to my right, or I would have been seized with fear again.

Looking carefully at my map, I realized the singularity of this room. Like the other blind rooms of the other three towers, it should have led to the central heptagonal room. If it didn’t, the entrance to the heptagon would have to be in the adjacent blind room, the U. But this room, which through one opening led into a roomwith a window on the octagon, and through another was connected to room S, had the other three walls full, occupied with cases. Looking around, we confirmed what was now obvious from the map: for reasons of logic as well as strict symmetry, that tower should have had its heptagonal room, but there was none.

None, I said. There’s no such room.

No, that’s not it. If there were no heptagon, the other rooms would be larger, whereas they are more or less the shape of those at the other extremes. The room exists, but cannot be reached.

Is it walled up?

Probably. And there is the finis Africae, there is the place that those monks who are now dead were hovering about, in their curiosity. It’s walled up, but that does not mean there is no access. Indeed, there surely is one, and Venantius found it, or was given its descrip tion by Adelmo, who had it from Berengar. Let’s read his notes again.

He took Venantius’s paper from his habit and reread it: The hand over the idol works on the first and the seventh of the four. He looked around. Why, of course! The ‘idolum’ is the image in the mirror! Venantius was thinking in Greek, and in that tongue, even more than in ours, ‘eidolon’ is image as well as ghost, and the mirror reflects our own image, distorted; we ourselves mistook it for a ghost the other night! But what, then, can be the four ‘supra idolum’? Something over the reflecting surface? Then we must place ourselves at a certain angle in order to perceive something reflected in the mirror that corresponds to Venantius’s description….

We tried every position, but with no result. Besides our images, the mirror reflected only hazy outlines of the rest of the room, dimly illuminated by the lamp.

Then, William meditated, by ‘supra idolum’ he could mean beyond the mirror … which would oblige us to go into the next room, for surely this mirror is a door….

The mirror was taller than a normal man, fixed to the wall by a sturdy oak frame. We touched it in every manner, we tried to thrust our fingers into it, our nails between the frame and the wall, but the mirror was as fast as if it were part of the wall, a stone among stones.

And if not beyond, it could be ‘super idolum,’ William murmured, and meanwhile raised his arm, stood on tiptoe, and ran his hand along the upper edge of the frame. He found nothing but dust.

For that matter, William reflected gloomily, even if beyond it there were a room, the book we are seeking and the others sought is no longer in that room, because it was taken away, first by Venantius and then, God knows where, by Berengar.

But perhaps Berengar brought it back here.

No, that evening we were in the library, and everything suggests he died not long after the theft, that same night, in the balneary. Otherwise we would have seen him again the next morning. No matter … For the present we have established where the finis Africae is and we have almost all the necessary information for perfecting our map of the library. You must admit that many of the labyrinth’s mysteries have now been clarified.

We went through other rooms, recording all our discoveries on my map. We came upon rooms devoted solely to writings on mathematics and astronomy, others with works in Aramaic characters which neither of us knew, others in even less recognizable characters, perhaps texts from India. We moved between two overlapping sequences that said IUDAEA and AEGYPTUS. In short, not to bore the reader with the chronicle of our deciphering, when we later perfected the map definitively we were convinced that the library was truly laid out and arranged according to the image of the terraqueous orb. To the north we found ANGLIA and GERMANI, which along the west wall were connected by GALLIA, which turned then, at the extreme west, into HIBERNIA, and toward the south wall ROMA (paradise of Latin classics!) and YSPANIA. Then to the south came the LEONES and AEGYPTUS, which to the east became IUDAEA and FONS ADAE. Between east and north, along the wall, ACAIA, a good synecdoche, as William expressed it, to indicate Greece, and in those four rooms there was, finally, a great hoard of poets and philosophers of pagan antiquity.

The system of words was eccentric. At times it proceeded in a single direction, at other times it went backward, at still others in a circle; often, as I said before, the same letter served to compose two different words (and in these instances the room had one case devoted to one subject and one to another). But obviously there was no point looking for a golden rule in this arrangement. It was purely a mnemonic device to allow the librarian to find a given work. To say of a book that it was found in quarta Acaiae meant that it was in the fourth room counting from the one in which the initial A appeared, and then, to identify it, presumably the librarian knew by heart the route, circular or straight, that he should follow, as acaia was distributed over four rooms arranged in a square. So we promptly learned the game of the blank walls. For example, approaching acaia from the east, you found none of the rooms led to the following rooms: the labyrinth at this point ended, and to reach the north tower you had to pass through the other three. But naturally the librarians entered from the fons, knowing perfectly well that to go, let us say, into anglia, they had to pass through AEGYPTUS, YSPANIA, GALLIA, and GERMANI.

With these and other fine discoveries our fruitful exploration in the library ended. But before saying that we prepared, contentedly, to leave it (only to be involved in other events I will narrate shortly), I must make a confession to my reader. I said that our exploration was undertaken, originally, to seek the key to the mysterious place but that, as we lingered along the way in the rooms we were marking down by subject and arrangement, we leafed through books of various kinds, as if we were exploring a mysterious continent or a terra incognita. And usually this second exploration proceeded by common accord, as William and I browsed through the same books, I pointing out the most curious ones to him, and he explaining to me many things I was unable to understand.

But at a certain point, and just as we were moving around the rooms of the south tower, known as LEONES, my master happened to stop in a room rich in Arabic works with odd optical drawings; and since we were that evening provided not with one but with two lamps, I moved, in my curiosity, into the next room, realizing that the wisdom and the prudence of the library’s planning had assembled along one of its walls books that certainly could not be handed out to anyone to read, because they dealt in various ways with diseases of body and spirit and were almost always written by infidel scholars. And my eye fell on a book, not large but adorned with miniatures far removed (luckily!) from the subject: flowers, vines, animals in pairs, some medicinal herbs. The title was Speculum amoris, by Maximus of Bologna, and it included quotations from many other works, all on the malady of love. As the reader will understand, it did not require much once more to inflame my mind, which had been numb since morning, and to excite it again with the girl’s image.

All that day I had driven myself to dispel my morning thoughts, repeating that they were not those of a sober, balanced novice, and moreover, since the day’s events had been sufficiently rich and intense to distract me, my appetites had been dormant, so that I thought I had freed myself by now from what had been but a passing restlessness. Instead, I had only to see that book and I was forced to say, “De te fabula narratur,” and I discovered I was more sick with love than I had believed. I learned later that, reading books of medicine, you are always convinced you feel the pains of which they speak. So it was that the mere reading of those pages, glanced at hastily in fear that William would enter the room and ask me what I was so diligently investigating, caused me to believe that I was suffering from that very disease, whose symptoms were so splendidly described that if, on the one hand, I was distressed to discover I was sick (and on the infallible evidence of so many auctoritates), on the other I rejoiced to see my own situation depicted so vividiy, convincing myself that even if I was ill, my illness was, so to speak, normal, inasmuch as countless others had suffered in the same way, and the quoted authors might have taken me personally as the model for their descriptions.

So I was moved by the pages of Ibn-Hazm, who defines love as a rebel illness whose treatment lies within itself, for the sick person does not want to be healed and he who is ill with it is reluctant to get well (and God knows this was true!). I realized why, that morning, I had been so stirred by everything I saw: it seems that love enters through the eyes, as Basil of Ancira also says, and—unmistakable symptom—he who is seized by such an illness displays an excessive gaiety, while he wishes at the same time to keep to himself and seeks solitude (as I had done that morning), while other phenomena affecting him are a violent restlessness and an awe that makes him speechless…. I was frightened to read that the sincere lover, when denied the sight of the beloved object, must fall into a wasting state that often reaches the point of confining him to bed, and sometimes the malady overpowers the brain, and the subject loses his mind and raves (obviously I had not yet reached that phase, because I had been quite alert in the exploration of the library). But I read with apprehension that if the illness worsens, death can ensue, and I asked myself whether the joy I derived from thinking of the girl was worth this supreme sacrifice of the body, apart from all due consideration of the soul’s health.

I learned, further, from some words of Saint Hildegard that the melancholy humor I had felt during the day, which I attributed to a sweet feeling of pain at the girl’s absence, was perilously close to the feeling experienced by one who strays from the harmonious and perfect state man experiences in paradise, and this “nigra et amara” melancholy is produced by the breath of the serpent and the influence of the Devil. An idea shared also by infidels of equal wisdom, for my eyes fell on the lines attributed to Abu-Bakr Muhammad ibn-Zakariyya ar-Razi, who in a Liber continens identifies amorous melancholy with lycanthropy, which drives its victim to behave like a wolf. His description clutched at my throat: first the lovers seem changed in the external appearance, their eyesight weakens, their eyes become hollow and without tears, their tongue slowly dries up and pustules appear on it, the whole body is parched and they suffer constant thirst; at this point they spend the day lying face down, and on the face and the tibias marks like dog bites appear, and finally the victims roam through the cemeteries at night like wolves.

Finally, I had no more doubts as to the gravity of my situation when I read quotations from the great Avicenna, who defined love as an assiduous thought of a melancholy nature, born as a result of one’s thinking again and again of the features, gestures, or behavior of a person of the opposite sex (with what vivid fidelity had Avicenna described my case!): it does not originate as an illness but is transformed into illness when, remaining unsatisfied, it becomes obsessive thought (and why did I feel so obsessed, I who, God forgive me, had been well satisfied? Or was perhaps what had happened the previous night not satisfaction of love? But how is this illness satisfied, then?), and so there is an incessant flutter of the eyelids, irregular respiration; now the victim laughs, now weeps, and the pulse throbs (and indeed mine throbbed, and my breathing stopped as I read those lines!). Avicenna advised an infallible method already proposed by Galen for discovering whether someone is in love: grasp the wrist of the sufferer and utter many names of members of the opposite sex, until you discover which name makes the pulse accelerate. I was afraid my master would enter abruptly, seize my arm, and observe in the throbbing of my veins my secret, of which I would have been greatly ashamed…. Alas, as remedy Avicenna suggested uniting the two lovers in matrimony, which would cure the illness. Truly he was an infidel, though a shrewd one, because he did not consider the condition of the Benedictine novice, thus condemned never to recover—or, rather, consecrated, through his own choice or the wise choice of his relatives, never to fall ill. Luckily Avicenna, though not thinking of the Cluniac order, did consider the case of lovers who cannot be joined, and advised as radical treatment hot baths. (Was Berengar trying to be healed of his lovesickness for the dead Adelmo? But could one suffer lovesickness for a being of one’s own sex, or was that only bestial lust? And was the night I had spent perhaps not bestial and lustful? No, of course not, I told myself at once, it was most sweet—and then immediately added: No, you are wrong, Adso, it was an illusion of the Devil, it was most bestial, and if you sinned in being a beast you sin all the more now in refusing to acknowledge it!) But then I read, again in Avicenna, that there were also other remedies: for example, enlisting the help of old and expert women who would spend their time denigrating the beloved—and it seems that old women are more expert than men in this task. Perhaps this was the solution, but I could not find any old women at the abbey (or young ones, actually), and so I would have to ask some monk to speak ill to me of the girl, but who? And besides, could a monk know women as well as an old gossip would know them? The last solution suggested by the Saracen was truly immodest, for it required the unhappy lover to couple with many slave girls, a remedy quite unsuitable for a monk. And so, I asked myself finally, how can a young monk be healed of love? Is there truly no salvation for him? Should I perhaps turn to Severinus and his herbs? I did find a passage in Arnold of Villanova, an author I had heard William mention with great esteem, who had it that lovesickness was born from an excess of humors and pneuma, when the human organism finds itself in an excess of dampness and heat, because the blood (which produces the generative seed), increasing through excess, produces excess of seed, a “complexio venerea,” and an intense desire for union in man and woman. There is an estimative virtue situated in the dorsal part of the median ventricle of the encephalus (What is that? I wondered) whose purpose is to perceive the insensitive intentiones perceived by the senses, and when desire for the object perceived by the senses becomes too strong, the estimative faculty is upset, and it feeds only on the phantom of the beloved person; then there is an inflammation of the whole soul and body, as sadness alternates with joy, because heat (which in moments of despair descends into the deepest parts of the body and chills the skin) in moments of joy rises to the surface, inflaming the face. The treatment suggested by Arnold consisted in trying to lose the assurance and the hope of reaching the beloved object, so that the thought would go away.

Why, in that case I am cured, or nearly cured, I said to myself, because I have little or no hope of seeing the object of my thoughts again, and if I saw it, no hope of gaining it, and if I gained it, none of possessing it again, and if I possessed it, of keeping it near me, because of both my monkish state and the duties imposed on me by my family’s station…. I am saved, I said to myself, and I closed the book and collected myself, just as William entered the room.

NIGHT

In which Salvatore allows himself to be discovered wretchedly by Bernard Gui, the girl loved by Adso is arrested as a witch, and all go to bed more unhappy and worried than before.

We were coming back down into the refectory when we heard some loud noises and saw some faint flashes of light from the direction of the kitchen. William promptly blew out his lamp. Clinging to the walls, we approached the door to the kitchen; we realized the sound came from outside, but the door was open. Then the voices and lights moved away, and someone slammed the door violently. There was a great tumult, which heralded something unpleasant. Swiftly we went back through the ossarium, re-emerged in the now deserted church, went out by the south door, and glimpsed a flickering of torches in the cloister.

We approached, and in the confusion we must have rushed outside like the many others already on the spot, who had come from either the dormitory or the pilgrims’ hospice. We saw archers firmly grasping Salvatore, white as the white of his eyes, and a woman, who was crying. My heart contracted: it was she, the girl of my thoughts. As she saw me, she recognized me and cast me a desperate, imploring look. My impulse was to rush and free her, but William restrained me, whispering some far-from-affectionate reproaches. Monks and guests were now rushing in from all sides.

The abbot arrived, as did Bernard Gui, to whom the captain of the archers made a brief report. This is what had happened.

By the inquisitor’s order, they patrolled the whole compound at night, paying special attention to the path that went from the main gate to the church, the gardens, and the façade of the Aedificium. (Why? I wondered. Then I understood: obviously because Bernard had heard from servants or from the cooks rumors about nocturnal movement between the outer walls and the kitchen, perhaps without learning exactly who was responsible; and perhaps the foolish Salvatore, as he had divulged his intentions to me, had already spoken in the kitchen or the barns to some wretch who, intimidated by questioning that afternoon, had thrown this rumor as a sop to Bernard.) Moving cautiously and in darkness through the fog, the archers had finally caught Salvatore in the woman’s company, as he was fiddling with the kitchen door.

“A woman in this holy place! And with a monk!” Bernard said sternly, addressing the abbot. “Most magnificent lord,” he continued, “if it involved only a violation of the vow of chastity, this man’s punishment would be a matter for your jurisdiction. But since we are not yet sure that the traffickings of these two wretches hasn’t something to do with the well-being of all the guests, we must first cast light on this mystery. Now, you rogue there!” And from Salvatore’s bosom he seized the obvious bundle the poor man was trying to hide. “What’s this you have here?”

I already knew: a knife; a black cat, which, once the bundle was unwrapped, fled with a furious yowl; and two eggs, now broken and slimy, which to everyone else looked like blood, or yellow bile, or some such foul substance. Salvatore was about to enter the kitchen, kill the cat, cut out its eyes; and who knows what promises he had used to induce the girl to follow him. I soon learned what promises. The archers searched the girl, with sly laughter and lascivious words, and they found on her a little dead rooster, still to be plucked. Ill-luck would have it that in the night, when all cats are gray, the cock seemed black, like the cat. I was thinking, however, that it took very little to lure her, poor hungry creature, who the night before had abandoned (and for love of me!) her precious ox heart….

“Aha!” Bernard cried, in a tone of great concern. “Black cat and cock … Ah, I know such paraphernalia….” He noticed William among those present. “Do you not also recognize them, Brother William? Were you not inquisitor in Kilkenny three years ago, where that girl had intercourse with a devil who appeared to her in the form of a black cat?”

To me it seemed my master remained silent out of cowardice. I tugged at his sleeve, shook him, whispered to him in despair, “Tell him, tell him it was to eat….”

He freed himself from my grip and spoke politely to Bernard: “I do not believe you need my past experiences to arrive at your conclusions,” he said.

“Oh, no, there are far more authoritative witnesses.” Bernard smiled. “Stephen of Bourbon, in his treatise on the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, tells how Saint Dominic, after preaching at Fanjeaux against the heretics, announced to certain women that they would see the master they had served till then. And suddenly into their midst sprang a frightful cat the size of a large dog, with huge blazing eyes, a bloody tongue that came to its navel, a short tail straight in the air so that however the animal turned it displayed the evil of its behind, more fetid than any other, as is proper for that anus which many devotees of Satan, not least the Knights Templar, have always been accustomed to kiss in the course of their meetings. And after moving about the women for an hour, the cat sprang on the bell rope and climbed up it, leaving his stinking waste behind. And is not the cat the animal beloved by the Catharists, who according to Alanus de Insulis are so called from ‘catus,’ because of this beast whose posterior they kiss, considering it the incarnation of Lucifer? And is this disgusting practice not confirmed also by William of La Verna in the De legibus? And does Albertus Magnus not say that cats are potential devils? And does not my venerable brother Jacques Fournier recall that on the deathbed of the inquisitor Geoffrey of Carcassonne two black cats appeared, who were no other than devils come to taunt those remains?”

A horrified murmur ran through the group of monks, many of whom made the sign of the holy cross.

“My lord abbot, my lord abbot,” Bernard was saying meanwhile, with a virtuous mien, “perhaps Your Magnificence does not know what sinners are accustomed to do with these instruments! But I know well, God help me! I have seen most wicked men, in the darkest hours of the night, along with others of their stripe, use black cats to achieve wonders that they could never deny: to straddle certain animals and travel immense spaces under cover of night, dragging their slaves, transformed into lustful incubi…. And the Devil shows himself to them, or at least so they strongly believe, in the form of a cock, or some other black animal, and with him—do not ask me how—they even lie together. And I know for certain that not long ago, in Avignon itself, with necromancies of this sort philters and ointments were prepared to make attempts on the life of our lord Pope himself, poisoning his foods. The Pope was able to defend himself and identify the toxin only because he was supplied with prodigious jewels in the form of serpents’ tongues, fortified by wondrous emeralds and rubies that through divine power were able to reveal the presence of poison in the foods. The King of France had given him eleven of these most precious tongues, thank heaven, and only thus could our lord Pope elude death! True, the Pontiff’s enemies went still further, and everyone knows what was learned about the heretic Bernard Délicieux, arrested ten years ago: books of black magic were found in his house, with notes written on the most wicked pages, containing all the instructions for making wax figures in order to harm enemies. And would you believe it? In his house were also found figures that reproduced, with truly admirable craft, the image of the Pope, with little red circles on the vital parts of the body. And everyone knows that such a figure, hung up by a string, is placed before a mirror, and then the vital parts are pierced with a pin, and … Oh, but why do I dwell on these vile, disgusting practices? The Pope himself spoke of them and described and condemned them, just last year, in his constitution Super illius specula! And I truly hope you have a copy in this rich library of yours, where it can be properly meditated on….”

“We have it, we have it,” the abbot eagerly confirmed, in great distress.

“Very well,” Bernard concluded. “Now the case seems clear to me. A monk seduced, a witch, and some ritual, which fortunately did not take place. To what end? That is what we will learn, and I am ready to sacrifice a few hours’ sleep to learn it. Will Your Magnificence put at my disposal a place where this man can be confined?”

“We have some cells in the basement of the smithy,” the abbot said, “which fortunately are very rarely used and have stood empty for years….”

“Fortunately or unfortunately,” Bernard remarked. And he ordered the archers to have someone show them the way and to take the two prisoners to separate cells; and the men were to tie the monk well to some rings set in the wall, so that Bernard could go down shortly and, questioning him, look him in the face. As for the girl, he added, it was clear who she was, and it was not worth questioning her that night. Other trials awaited her before she would be burned as a witch. And if witch she were, she would not speak easily. But the monk might still repent, perhaps (and he glared at the trembling Salvatore, as if to make him understand he was being offered a last chance), telling the truth and, Bernard added, denouncing his accomplices.

The two were dragged off, one silent and destroyed, almost feverish, the other weeping and kicking and screaming like an animal being led to the shambles. But neither Bernard nor the archers nor I myself could understand what she was saying in her peasant tongue. For all her shouting, she was as if mute. There are words that give power, others that make us all the more derelict, and to this latter category belong the vulgar words of the simple, to whom the Lord has not granted the boon of self-expression in the universal tongue of knowledge and power.

Once again I was tempted to follow her; once again William, grim, restrained me. “Be still, fool,” he said. “The girl is lost; she is burnt flesh.”

As I observed the scene with terror, staring at the girl in a swarm of contradictory thoughts, I felt someone touch my shoulder. I don’t know why, but even before I turned I recognized the touch of Ubertino.

“You are looking at the witch, are you not?” he asked me. And I knew he could not know of my story, and therefore he was saying this only because he had caught, with his terrible penetration of human passions, the intensity of my gaze.

“No,” I defended myself, “I am not looking at her … or, rather, perhaps I am looking at her, but she isn’t a witch…. We don’t know: perhaps she is innocent….”

“And you look at her because she is beautiful. She is beautiful, is she not?” he asked me with extraordinary warmth, pressing my arm. “If you look at her because she is beautiful, and you are upset by her (but I know you are upset, because the sin of which she is suspected makes her all the more fascinating to you), if you look at her and feel desire, that alone makes her a witch. Be on guard, my son…. The beauty of the body stops at the skin. If men could see what is beneath the skin, as with the lynx of Boeotia, they would shudder at the sight of a woman. All that grace consists of mucus and blood, humors and bile. If you think of what is hidden in the nostrils, in the throat, and in the belly, you will find only filth. And if it revolts you to touch mucus or dung with your fingertip, how could we desire to embrace the sack that contains that dung?”

An access of vomiting seized me. I didn’t want to hear any more. My master, who had also heard, came to my rescue. He brusquely approached Ubertino, grasped his arm, and freed it from mine.

“That will do, Ubertino,” he said. “That girl will soon be under torture, then on the pyre. She will become exactly as you say, mucus, blood, humors, and bile. But it will be men like us who dig from beneath her skin that which the Lord wanted to be protected and adorned by that skin. And when it comes to prime matter, you are no better than she. Leave the boy alone.”

Ubertino was upset. “Perhaps I have sinned,” he murmured. “I have surely sinned. What else can a sinner do?”

Now everyone was going back inside, commenting on the event. William remained a little while with Michael and the other Minorites, who were asking him his impressions.

“Bernard now has an argument, ambiguous though it be. In the abbey there are necromancers circulating who do the same things that were done against the Pope in Avignon. It is not, certainly, proof, and, in the first place, it cannot be used to disturb tomorrow’s meeting. Tonight he will try to wring from that poor wretch some other clue, which, I’m sure, Bernard will not use immediately tomorrow morning. He will keep it in reserve: it will be of use later, to upset the progress of the discussions if they should ever take a direction unpleasing to him.”

“Could he force the monk to say something to be used against us?” Michael of Cesena asked.

William was dubious. “Let’s hope not,” he said. I realized that, if Salvatore told Bernard what he had told us, about his own past and the cellarer’s, and if he hinted at something about their relationship with Ubertino, fleeting though it may have been, a highly embarrassing situation would be created.

“In any case, let’s wait and see what happens,” William said with serenity. “For that matter, Michael, everything was already decided beforehand. But you want to try.”

“I do,” Michael said, “and the Lord will help me. May Saint Francis intercede for all of us.”

“Amen,” all replied.

“But that is not necessarily possible,” was William’s irreverent comment. “Saint Francis could be off somewhere waiting for judgment day, without seeing the Lord face to face.”

“A curse on that heretic John!” I heard Master Jerome mutter, as each went back to bed. “If he now robs us of the saints’ help, what will become of us, poor sinners that we are?”

FIFTH DAY

PRIME

In which there occurs a fraternal debate regarding the poverty of Jesus.

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; blem-myae, 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 Adconditorem 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 proved by the fact that, as an immediate consequence, Brother Bonagratia was held in prison for a year. Nor could there be any doubts as to the Pontiff’s 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 1 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’ palaces, 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.

TERCE

In which Severinus speaks to William of a strange book, and William speaks to the envoys of a strange concept of temporal government.

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 Jorge’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 jamb 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 may “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 things 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.”

SEXT

In which Severinus is found murdered but the book that he had found is to be found no longer.

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, 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 this 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.

NONES

In which justice is meted out, and there is the embarrassing impression that everyone is wrong.

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 eves 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 everything 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 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.

VESPERS

In which Ubertino takes flight, Benno begins to observe the laws, and William makes some reflections on the various types of lust encountered that day.

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 fomentor 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 gain 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.”

COMPLINE

In which a sermon is heard about the coming of the Antichrist, and Adso discovers the power of proper names.

Vespers had been sung in a confused fashion while the interrogartion 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.

SIXTH DAY

MATINS

In which the princes sederunt, and Malachi slumps to the ground.

We went down to matins. That last part of the night, virtually the first part of the imminent new day, was still foggy. As I crossed the cloister the dampness penetrated to my bones, aching after my uneasy sleep. Although the church was cold, I knelt under those vaults with a sigh of relief, sheltered from the elements, comforted by the warmth of other bodies, and by prayer.

The chanting of the psalms had just begun when William pointed to the stalls opposite us: there was an empty place in between Jorge and Pacificus of Tivoli. It was the place of Malachi, who always sat beside the blind man. Nor were we the only ones who had noticed the absence. On one side I caught a worried glance from the abbot, all too well aware, surely, that those vacancies always heralded grim news. And on the other I noticed that old Jorge was unusually agitated. His face, as a rule so inscrutable because of those white, blank eyes, was plunged almost entirely in darkness; but his hands were nervous and restless. In fact, more than once he groped at the seat beside him, as if to see whether it was occupied. He repeated that gesture again and again, at regular intervals, as if hoping that the absent man would appear at any moment but fearing not to find him.

“Where can the librarian be?” I whispered to William.

“Malachi,” William answered, “is by now the sole possessor of the book. If he is not guilty of the crimes, then he may not know the dangers that book involves….”

There was nothing further to be said. We could only wait. And we waited: William and I, the abbot, who continued to stare at the empty place, and Jorge, who never stopped questioning the darkness with his hands.

When we reached the end of the office, the abbot reminded monks and novices that it was necessary to prepare for the Christmas High Mass; therefore, as was the custom, the time before lauds would be spent assaying the accord of the whole community in the performance of some chants prescribed for the occasion. That assembly of devout men was in effect trained as a single body, a single harmonious voice; through a process that had gone on for years, they acknowledged their unification, into a single soul, in their singing.

The abbot invited them to chant the “Sederunt”:

Sederunt principes

et adversus me
loquebantur, iniqui
persecuti sunt me.
Adiuva me, Domine
Deus meus, salvum me
fac propter magnam misericordiam tuam.

I asked myself whether the abbot had not chosen deliberately that gradual to be chanted on that particular night, the cry to God of the persecuted, imploring help against wicked princes. And there, the princes’ envoys were still present at the service, to be reminded of how for centuries our order had been prompt to resist the persecution of the powerful, thanks to its special bond with the Lord, God of hosts. And indeed the beginning of the chant created an impression of great power.

On the first syllable, a slow and solemn chorus began, dozens and dozens of voices, whose bass sound filled the naves and floated over our heads and yet seemed to rise from the heart of the earth. Nor did it break off, because as other voices began to weave, over that deep and continuing line, a series of vocalises and melismas, it—telluric—continued to dominate and did not cease for the whole time that it took a speaker to repeat twelve “Ave Maria”s in a slow and cadenced voice. And as if released from every fear by the confidence that the prolonged syllable, allegory of the duration of eternity, gave to those praying, the other voices (and especially the novices’) on that rock-solid base raised cusps, columns, pinnacles of liquescent and underscored neumae. And as my heart was dazed with sweetness at the vibration of a climacus or a porrectus, a torculus or a salicus, those voices seemed to say to me that the soul (of those praying, and my own as I listened to them), unable to bear the exuberance of feeling, was lacerated through them to express joy, grief, praise, love, in an impetus of sweet sounds. Meanwhile, the obstinate insistence of the chthonian voices did not let up, as if the threatening presence of enemies, of the powerful who persecuted the people of the Lord, remained unresolved. Until that Neptunian roiling of a single note seemed overcome, or at least convinced and enfolded, by the rejoicing hallelujahs of those who opposed it, and all dissolved on a majestic and perfect chord and on a resupine neuma.

Once the “sederunt” had been uttered with a kind of stubborn difficulty, the “principes” rose in the air with grand and seraphic calm. I no longer asked myself who were the mighty who spoke against me (against us); the shadow of that seated, menacing ghost had dissolved, had disappeared.

And other ghosts, I also believed, dissolved at that point, because on looking again at Malachi’s stall, after my attention had been absorbed by the chant, I saw the figure of the librarian among the others in prayer, as if he had never been missing. I looked at William and saw a hint of relief in his eyes, the same relief that I noted from the distance in the eyes of the abbot. As for Jorge, he had once more extended his hands and, encountering his neighbor’s body, had withdrawn them promptly. But I could not say what feelings stirred him.

Now the choir was festively chanting the “Adiuva me,” whose bright a swelled happily through the church, and even the u did not seem grim as that in “sederunt,” but full of holy vigor. The monks and the novices sang, as the rule of chant requires, with body erect, throat free, head looking up, the book almost at shoulder height so they could read without having to lower their heads and thus causing the breath to come from the chest with less force. But it was still night, and though the trumpets of rejoicing blared, the haze of sleep trapped many of the singers, who, lost perhaps in the production of a long note, trusting the very wave of the chant, nodded at times, drawn by sleepiness. Then the wakers, even in that situation, explored the faces with a light, one by one, to bring them back to wakefulness of body and of soul.

So it was a waker who first noticed Malachi sway in a curious fashion, as if he had suddenly plunged back into the Cimmerian fog of a sleep that he had probably not enjoyed during the night. The waker went over to him with the lamp, illuminating his face and so attracting my attention. The librarian had no reaction. The man touched him, and Malachi slumped forward heavily. The waker barely had time to catch him before he fell.

The chanting slowed down, the voices died, there was brief bewilderment. William had jumped immediately from his seat and rushed to the place where Pacificus of Tivoli and the waker were now laying Malachi on the ground, unconscious.

We reached them almost at the same time as the abbot, and in the light of the lamp we saw the poor man’s face. I have already described Malachi’s countenance, but that night, in that glow, it was the very image of death: the sharp nose, the hollow eyes, the sunken temples, the white, wrinkled ears with lobes turned outward, the skin of the face now rigid, taut, and dry, the color of the cheeks yellowish and suffused with a dark shadow. The eyes were still open and a labored breathing escaped those parched lips. He opened his mouth, and as I stooped behind William, who had bent over him, I saw a now blackish tongue stir within the cloister of his teeth. William, his arm around Malachi’s shoulders, raised him, wiping away with his free hand a film of sweat that blanched his brow. Malachi felt a touch, a presence; he stared straight ahead, surely not seeing, certainly not recognizing who was before him. He raised a trembling hand, grasped William by the chest, drawing his face down until they almost touched, then faintly and hoarsely he uttered some words: “He told me … truly…. It had the power of a thousand scorpions….”

“Who told you?” William asked him. “Who?”

Malachi tried again to speak. But he was seized by a great trembling and his head fell backward. His face lost all color, all semblance of life. He was dead.

William stood up. He noticed the abbot beside him, but did not say a word to him. Then, behind the abbot, he saw Bernard Gui.

“My lord Bernard,” William asked, “who killed this man, after you so cleverly found and confined the murderers?”

“Do not ask me,” Bernard said. “I have never said I had consigned to the law all the criminals loose in this abbey. I would have done so gladly, had I been able.” He looked at William. “But the others I now leave to the severity … or the excessive indulgence of my lord abbot.” The abbot blanched and remained silent. Then Bernard left.

At that moment we heard a kind of whimpering, a choked sob. It was Jorge, on his kneeling bench, supported by a monk who must have described to him what had happened.

“It will never end…” he said in a broken voice. “O Lord, forgive us all!”

William bent over the corpse for another moment. He grasped the wrists, turned the palms of the hands toward the light. The pads of the first three fingers of the right hand were darkened.

LAUDS

In which a new cellarer is chosen, but not a new librarian.

Was it time for lauds already? Was it earlier or later? From that point on I lost all temporal sense. Perhaps hours went by, perhaps less, in which Malachi’s body was laid out in church on a catafalque, while the brothers formed a semicircle around it. The abbot issued instructions for a prompt funeral. I heard him summon Benno and Nicholas of Morimondo. In less than a day, he said, the abbey had been deprived of its librarian and its cellarer. “You,” he said to Nicholas, “will take over the duties of Remigio. You know the jobs of many, here in the abbey. Name someone to take your place in charge of the forges, and provide for today’s immediate necessities in the kitchen, the refectory. You are excused from offices. Go.” Then to Benno he said, “Only yesterday evening you were named Malachi’s assistant. Provide for the opening of the scriptorium and make sure no one goes up into the library alone.” Shyly, Benno pointed out that he had not yet been initiated into the secrets of that place. The abbot glared at him sternly. “No one has said you will be. You see that work goes on and is offered as a prayer for our dead brothers … and for those who will yet die. Each monk will work only on the books already given him. Those who wish may consult the catalogue. Nothing else. You are excused from vespers, because at that hour you will lock up everything.”

“But how will I come out?” Benno asked.

“Good question. I will lock the lower doors after supper. Go.”

He went out with them, avoiding William, who wanted to talk to him. In the choir, a little group remained: Alinardo, Pacificus of Tivoli, Aymaro of Alessandria, and Peter of Sant’Albano. Aymaro was sneering.

“Let us thank the Lord,” he said. “With the German dead, there was the risk of having a new librarian even more barbarous.”

“Who do you think will be named in his place?” William asked.

Peter of Sant’Albano smiled enigmatically. “After everything that has happened these past few days, the problem is no longer the librarian, but the abbot….”

“Hush,” Pacificus said to him. And Alinardo, with his usual pensive look, said, “They will commit another injustice … as in my day. They must be stopped.”

“Who?” William asked. Pacificus took him confidentially by the arm and led him a distance from the old man, toward the door.

“Alinardo … as you know … we love him very much. For us he represents the old tradition and the finest days of the abbey…. But sometimes he speaks without knowing what he says. We are all worried about the new librarian. The man must be worthy, and mature, and wise…. That is all there is to it.”

“Must he know Greek?” William asked.

“And Arabic, as tradition has it: his office requires it. But there are many among us with these gifts. I, if I may say so, and Peter, and Aymaro…”

“Benno knows Greek.”

“Benno is too young. I do not know why Malachi chose him as his assistant yesterday, but…”

“Did Adelmo know Greek?”

“I believe not. No, surely not.”

“But Venantius knew it. And Berengar. Very well, I thank you.”

We left, to go and get something in the kitchen.

“Why did you want to find out who knew Greek?” I asked.

“Because all those who die with blackened fingers know Greek. Therefore it would be well to expect the next corpse among those who know Greek. Including me. You are safe.”

“And what do you think of Malachi’s last words?”

“You heard them. Scorpions. The fifth trumpet announces, among other things, the coming of locusts that will torment men with a sting like a scorpion’s. And Malachi informed us that someone had forewarned him.”

“The sixth trumpet,” I said, “announces horses with lions’ heads from whose mouths come smoke and fire and brimstone, ridden by men covered with breastplates the color of fire, jacinth, and brimstone.”

“Too many things. But the next crime might take place near the horse barn. We must keep an eye on it. And we must prepare ourselves for the seventh blast. Two more victims still. Who are the most likely candidates? If the objective is the secret of the finis Africae, those who know it. And as far as I can tell, that means only the abbot. Unless the plot is something else. You heard them just now, scheming to depose the abbot, but Alinardo spoke in the plural….”

“The abbot must be warned,” I said.

“Of what? That they will kill him? I have no convincing evidence. I proceed as if the murderer and I think alike. But if he were pursuing another design? And if, especially, there were not a murderer?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know exactly. But as I said to you, we must imagine all possible orders, and all disorders.”

PRIME

In which Nicholas tells many things as the crypt of the treasure is visited.

Nicholas of Morimondo, in his new position as cellarer, was giving orders to the cooks, and they were supplying him with information about the operation of the kitchen. William wanted to speak with him, but Nicholas asked us to wait a few moments, until he had to go down into the crypt of the treasure to supervise the polishing of the glass cases, which was still his responsibility; there he would have more time for conversation.

A little later, he did in fact ask us to follow him. He entered the church, went behind the main altar (while the monks were setting up a catafalque in the nave, to keep vigil over Malachi’s corpse), and led us down a little ladder. At its foot we found ourselves in a room with a very low vaulted ceiling supported by thick rough-stone columns. We were in the crypt where the riches of the abbey were stored, a place of which the abbot was very jealous and which he allowed to be opened only under exceptional circumstances and for very important visitors.

On every side were cases of different dimensions; in them, objects of wondrous beauty shone in the glow of the torches (lighted by two of Nicholas’s trusted assistants). Gold vestments, golden crowns studded with gems, coffers of various metals engraved with figures, works in niello and ivory. In ecstasy, Nicholas showed us an evangeliarium whose binding displayed amazing enamel plaques composing a variegated unity of graduated compartments, outlined in gold filigree and fixed by precious stones in the guise of nails. He showed us a delicate aedicula with two columns of lapis lazuli and gold which framed an Entombment of Christ in fine silver bas-relief surmounted by a golden cross set with thirteen diamonds against a background of grainy onyx, while the little pediment was scalloped with agate and rubies. Then I saw a chryselephantine diptych divided into five sections, with five scenes from the life of Christ, and in the center a mystical lamp composed of cells of gilded silver with glass paste, a single polychrome image on a ground of waxen whiteness.

Nicholas’s face and gestures, as he illustrated these things for us, were radiant with pride. William praised the objects he had seen, then asked Nicholas what sort of man Malachi had been.

Nicholas moistened one finger and rubbed it over a crystal surface imperfectly polished, then answered with a half smile, not looking William in the face: “As many said, Malachi seemed quite thoughtful, but on the contrary he was a very simple man. According to Alinardo, he was a fool.”

“Alinardo bears a grudge against someone for a remote event, when he was denied the honor of being librarian.”

“I, too, have heard talk of that, but it is an old story, dating back at least fifty years. When I arrived here the librarian was Robert of Bobbio, and the old monks muttered about an injustice committed against Alinardo. Robert had an assistant, who later died, and Malachi, still very young, was appointed in his place. Many said that Malachi was without merit, that though he claimed to know Greek and Arabic it was not true, he was only good at aping, copying manuscripts in those languages in fine calligraphy, without understanding what he was copying. Alinardo insinuated that Malachi had been put in that position to favor the schemes of his, Alinardo’s, enemy. But I did not understand whom he meant. That is the whole story. There have always been whispers that Malachi protected the library like a guard dog, but with no knowledge of what he was guarding. For that matter, there was also whispering against Berengar, when Malachi chose him as assistant. They said that the young man was no cleverer than his master, that he was only an intriguer. They also said—but you must have heard these rumors yourself by now—that there was a strange relationship between him and Malachi…. Old gossip. Then, as you know, there was talk about Berengar and Adelmo, and the young scribes said that Malachi silently suffered horrible jealousy…. And then there was also murmuring about the ties between Malachi and Jorge. No, not in the sense you might believe—no one has ever murmured against Jorge’s virtue!—but Malachi, as librarian, by tradition should have chosen the abbot as his confessor, whereas all the other monks go to Jorge for confession (or to Alinardo, but the old man is by now almost mindless)…. Well, they said that in spite of this, the librarian conferred too often with Jorge, as if the abbot directed Malachi’s soul but Jorge ruled his body, his actions, his work. Indeed, as you know yourself and have probably seen, if anyone wanted to know the location of an ancient, forgotten book, he did not ask Malachi, but Jorge. Malachi kept the catalogue and went up into the library, but Jorge knew what each title meant….”

“Why did Jorge know so many things about the library?”

“He is the oldest, after Alinardo; he has been here since his youth. Jorge must be over eighty, and they say he has been blind at least forty years, perhaps longer….”

“How did he become so learned, before his blindness?”

“Oh, there are legends about him. It seems that when he was only a boy he was already blessed by divine grace, and in his native Castile he read the books of the Arabs and the Greek doctors while still a child. And then even after his blindness, even now, he sits for long hours in the library, he has others recite the catalogue to him and bring him books, and a novice reads aloud to him for hours and hours.”

“Now that Malachi and Berengar are dead, who is left who possesses the secrets of the library?”

“The abbot, and the abbot must now hand them on to Benno … if he chooses….”

“Why do you say ‘if he chooses’?”

“Because Benno is young, and he was named assistant while Malachi was still alive; being assistant librarian is different from being librarian. By tradition, the librarian later becomes abbot….”

“Ah, so that is it…. That is why the post of librarian is so coveted. But then Abo was once librarian?”

“No, not Abo. His appointment took place before I arrived here; it must be thirty years ago now. Before that, Paul of Rimini was abbot, a curious man about whom they tell strange stories. It seems he was a most voracious reader, he knew by heart all the books in the library, but he had a strange infirmity: he was unable to write. They called him Abbas agraphicus…. He became abbot when very young; it was said he had the support of Algirdas of Cluny…. But this is old monkish gossip. Anyway, Paul became abbot, and Robert of Bobbio took his place in the library, but he wasted away as an illness consumed him; they knew he would never be able to govern the abbey, and when Paul of Rimini disappeared…”

“He died?”

“No, he disappeared, I do not know how. One day he went off on a journey and never came back; perhaps he was killed by thieves in the course of his travels…. Anyway, when Paul disappeared, Robert could not take his place, and there were obscure plots. Abo—it is said—was the natural son of the lord of this district. He grew up in the abbey of Fossanova; it was said that as a youth he had tended Saint Thomas when he died there and had been in charge of carrying that great body down the stairs of a tower where the corpse could not pass…. That was his moment of glory, the malicious here murmured…. The fact is, he was elected abbot, even though he had not been librarian, and he was instructed by someone, Robert I believe, in the mysteries of the library. Now you understand why I do not know whether the abbot will want to instruct Benno: it would be like naming him his successor, a heedless youth, a half-barbarian grammarian from the Far North, what could he know about this country, the abbey, its relations with the lords of the area?”

“But Malachi was not Italian, either, or Berengar, and yet both of them were appointed to the library.”

“There is a mysterious thing for you. The monks grumble that for the past half century or more the abbey has been forsaking its traditions…. This is why, over fifty years ago, perhaps earlier, Alinardo aspired to the position of librarian. The librarian had always been Italian—there is no scarcity of great minds in this land. And besides, you see…” Here Nicholas hesitated, as if reluctant to say what he was about to say. “…you see, Malachi and Berengar died, perhaps so that they would not become abbot.”

He stirred, waved his hand before his face as if to dispel thoughts less than honest, then made the sign of the cross. “Whatever am I saying? You see, in this country shameful things have been happening for many years, even in the monasteries, in the papal court, in the churches…. Conflicts to gain power, accusations of heresy to take a prebend from someone … How ugly! I am losing faith in the human race; I see plots and palace conspiracies on every side. That our abbey should come to this, a nest of vipers risen through occult magic in what had been a triumph of sainted members. Look: the past of this monastery!”

He pointed to the treasures scattered all around, and, leaving the crosses and other vessels, he took us to see the reliquaries, which represented the glory of this place.

“Look,” he said, “this is the tip of the spear that pierced the side of the Saviour!” We saw a golden box with a crystal lid, containing a purple cushion on which lay a piece of iron, triangular in shape, once corroded by rust but now restored to vivid splendor by long application of oils and waxes. But this was still nothing. For in another box, of silver studded with amethysts, its front panel transparent, I saw a piece of the venerated wood of the holy cross, brought to this abbey by Queen Helena herself, mother of the Emperor Constantine, after she had gone as a pilgrim to the holy places, excavated the hill of Golgotha and the holy sepulcher, and constructed a cathedral over it.

Then Nicholas showed us other things, and I could not describe them all, in their number and their rarity. There was, in a case of aquamarine, a nail of the cross. In an ampoule, lying on a cushion of little withered roses, there was a portion of the crown of thorns; and in another box, again on a blanket of dried flowers, a yellowed shred of the tablecloth from the last supper. And then there was the purse of Saint Matthew, of silver links; and in a cylinder, bound by a violet ribbon eaten by time and sealed with gold, a bone from Saint Anne’s arm. I saw, wonder of wonders, under a glass bell, on a red cushion embroidered with pearls, a piece of the manger of Bethlehem, and a hand’s length of the purple tunic of Saint John the Evangelist, two links of the chains that bound the ankles of the apostle Peter in Rome, the skull of Saint Adalbert, the sword of Saint Stephen, a tibia of Saint Margaret, a finger of Saint Vitalis, a rib of Saint Sophia, the chin of Saint Eobanus, the upper part of Saint Chrysostom’s shoulder blade, the engagement ring of Saint Joseph, a tooth of the Baptist, Moses’s rod, a tattered scrap of very fine lace from the Virgin Mary’s wedding dress.

And then other things that were not relics but still bore perennial witness to wonders and wondrous beings from distant lands, brought to the abbey by monks who had traveled to the farthest ends of the world: a stuffed basilisk and hydra, a unicorn’s horn, an egg that a hermit had found inside another egg, a piece of the manna that had fed the Hebrews in the desert, a whale’s tooth, a coconut, the scapula of an animal from before the Flood, an elephant’s ivory tusk, the rib of a dolphin. And then more relics that I did not identify, whose reliquaries were perhaps more precious than they, and some (judging by the craftsmanship of their containers, of blackened silver) very ancient: an endless series of fragments, bone, cloth, wood, metal, glass. And phials with dark powders, one of which, I learned, contained the charred remains of the city of Sodom, and another some mortar from the walls of Jericho. All things, even the humblest, for which an emperor would have given more than a castle, and which represented a hoard not only of immense prestige but also of actual material wealth for the abbey that preserved them.

I continued wandering about, dumbfounded, for Nicholas had now stopped explaining the objects, each of which was described by a scroll anyway; and now I was free to roam virtually at random amid that display of priceless wonders, at times admiring things in full light, at times glimpsing them in semidarkness, as Nicholas’s helpers moved to another part of the crypt with their torches. I was fascinated by those yellowed bits of cartilage, mystical and revolting at the same time, transparent and mysterious; by those shreds of clothing from some immemorial age, faded, threadbare, sometimes rolled up in a phial like a faded manuscript; by those crumbled materials mingling with the fabric that was their bed, holy jetsam of a life once animal (and rational) and now, imprisoned in constructions of crystal or of metal that in their minuscule size mimed the boldness of stone cathedrals with towers and turrets, all seemed transformed into mineral substance as well. Is this, then, how the bodies of the saints, buried, await the resurrection of the flesh? From these shards would there be reconstructed those organisms that in the splendor of the beatific vision, regaining their every natural sensitivity, would sense, as Pipernus wrote, even the minimas differentias odorum?

William stirred me from my meditations as he touched my shoulder. “I am going,” he said. “I’m going up to the scriptorium. I have yet something to consult….”

“But it will be impossible to have any books,” I said. “Benno was given orders….”

“I have to re-examine only the books I was reading the other day; all are still in the scriptorium, on Venantius’s desk. You stay here, if you like. This crypt is a beautiful epitome of the debates on poverty you have been following these past few days. And now you know why your brothers make mincemeat of one another as they aspire to the position of abbot.”

“But do you believe what Nicholas implied? Are the crimes connected with a conflict over the investiture?”

“I’ve already told you that for the present I don’t want to put hypotheses into words. Nicholas said many things. And some interested me. But now I am going to follow yet another trail. Or perhaps the same, but from a different direction. And don’t succumb too much to the spell of these cases. I have seen many other fragments of the cross, in other churches. If all were genuine, our Lord’s torment could not have been on a couple of planks nailed together, but on an entire forest.”

“Master!” I said, shocked.

“So it is, Adso. And there are even richer treasuries. Some time ago, in the cathedral of Cologne, I saw the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve.”

“Really?” I exclaimed, amazed. Then, seized by doubt, I added, “But the Baptist was executed at a more advanced age!”

“The other skull must be in another treasury,” William said, with a grave face. I never understood when he was jesting. In my country, when you joke you say something and then you laugh very noisily, so everyone shares in the joke. But William laughed only when he said serious things, and remained very serious when he was presumably joking.

TERCE

In which Adso, listening to the “Dies irae,” has a dream, or vision, howsoever you may choose to define it.

William took his leave of Nicholas and went up to the scriptorium. By now I had seen my fill of the treasure and decided to go into the church and pray for Malachi’s soul. I had never loved that man, who frightened me; and I will not deny that for a long time I believed him guilty of all the crimes. But now I had learned that he was perhaps a poor wretch, oppressed by unfulfilled passions, an earthenware vessel among vessels of iron, surly because bewildered, silent and evasive because conscious he had nothing to say. I felt a certain remorse toward him, and I thought that praying for his supernatural destiny might allay my feelings of guilt.

The church was now illuminated by a faint and livid glow, dominated by the poor man’s corpse, and inhabited by the monotone murmur of the monks reciting the office of the dead.

In the monastery of Melk I had several times witnessed a brother’s decease. It was not what I could call a happy occasion, but still it seemed to me serene, governed by calm and by a sense of rightness. The monks took turns in the dying man’s cell, comforting him with good words, and each in his heart considered how the dying man was fortunate, because he was about to conclude a virtuous life and would soon join the choir of angels in that bliss without end. And a part of this serenity, the odor of that pious envy, was conveyed to the dying man, who in the end died serenely. How different the deaths of the past few days! Finally I had seen at close hand how a victim of the diabolical scorpions of the finis Africae died, and certainly Venantius and Berengar had also died like that, seeking relief in water, their faces already wasted as Malachi’s had been.

I sat at the back of the church, huddled down to combat the chill. As I felt a bit of warmth, I moved my lips to join the chorus of the praying brothers. I followed them almost without being aware of what my lips were saying, while my head nodded and my eyes wanted to close. Long minutes went by; I believe I fell asleep and woke up at least three or four times. Then the choir began to chant the “Dies irae.”…The chanting affected me like a narcotic. I went completely to sleep. Or perhaps, rather than slumber, I fell into an exhausted, agitated doze, bent double, like an infant still in its mother’s womb. And in that fog of the soul, finding myself as if in a region not of this world, I had a vision, or dream, if you prefer to call it that.

I was descending some narrow steps into a low passage, as if I were entering the treasure crypt, but, continuing to descend, I arrived in a broader crypt, which was the kitchen of the Aedificium. It was certainly the kitchen, but there was a bustle among not only ovens and pots, but also bellows and hammers, as if Nicholas’s smiths had assembled there as well. Everything glowed red from the stoves and cauldrons, and boiling pots gave off steam while huge bubbles rose to their surfaces and popped suddenly with a dull, repeated sound. The cooks turned spits in the air, as the novices, who had all gathered, leaped up to snatch the chickens and the other fowl impaled on those red-hot irons. But nearby the smiths hammered so powerfully that the whole air was deafened, and clouds of sparks rose from the anvils, mingling with those belching from the two ovens.

I could not understand whether I was in hell or in such a paradise as Salvatore might have conceived, dripping with juices and throbbing with sausages. But I had no time to wonder where I was, because in rushed a swarm of little men, dwarfs with huge pot-shaped heads; sweeping me away, they thrust me to the threshold of the refectory, forcing me to enter.

The hall was bedecked for a feast. Great tapestries and banners hung on the walls, but the images adorning them were not those usually displayed for the edification of the faithful or the celebration of the glories of kings. They seemed inspired, on the contrary, by Adelmo’s marginalia, and they reproduced his less awful and more comical images: hares dancing around the tree of plenty, rivers filled with fish that flung themselves spontaneously into frying pans held out by monkeys dressed as cook-bishops, monsters with fat bellies skipping around steaming kettles.

In the center of the table was the abbot, in feast-day dress, with a great vestment of embroidered purple, holding his fork like a scepter. Beside him, Jorge drank from a great mug of wine, and Remigio, dressed like Bernard Gui, held a book shaped like a scorpion, virtuously reading the lives of the saints and passages from the Gospels, but they were stories about Jesus joking with the apostle, reminding him that he was a stone and on that shameless stone that rolled over the plain he would build his church, or the story of Saint Jerome commenting on the Bible and saying that God wanted to bare Jerusalem’s behind. And at every sentence the cellarer read, Jorge laughed, pounded his fist on the table, and shouted, “You shall be the next abbot, by God’s belly!” Those were his very words, may the Lord forgive me.

At a merry signal from the abbot, the procession of virgins entered. It was a radiant line of richly dressed females, in whose midst I thought at first I could discern my mother; then I realized my error, because it was certainly the maiden terrible as an army with banners. Except that she wore a crown of white pearls on her head, a double strand, and two cascades of pearls fell on either side of her face, mingling with two other rows which hung on her bosom, and from each pearl hung a diamond as big as a plum. Further, from both ears descended rows of blue pearls, which joined to become a choker at the base of her neck, white and erect as a tower of Lebanon. The cloak was murex-colored, and in her hand she had a diamond-studded golden goblet in which I knew, I cannot say how, was contained the lethal unguent one day stolen from Severinus. This woman, fair as the dawn, was followed by other female forms. One was clothed in a white embroidered mantle over a dark dress adorned with a double stole of gold embroidered in wild flowers; the second wore a cloak of yellow damask on a pale-pink dress dotted with green leaves, and with two great spun squares in the form of a dark labyrinth; and the third had an emerald dress interwoven with little red animals, and she bore in her hands a white embroidered stole; I did not observe the clothing of the others, because I was trying to understand who they were, to be accompanying the maiden, who now resembled the Virgin Mary; and as if each bore in her hand a scroll, or as if a scroll came from each woman’s mouth, I knew they were Ruth, Sarah, Susanna, and other women of Scripture.

At this point the abbot cried, “Come on in, you whoresons!” and into the refectory came another array of sacred personages, in austere and splendid dress, whom I recognized clearly; and in the center of the group was one seated on a throne who was our Lord but at the same time He was Adam, dressed in a purple cloak with a great diadem, red and white with rubies and pearls, holding the cloak on His shoulders, and on His head a crown similar to the maiden’s, in His hand a larger goblet, brimming with pig’s blood. Other most holy personages of whom I will speak, all familiar to me, surrounded him, along with a host of the King of France’s archers, dressed either in green or in red, with a pale-emerald shield on which the monogram of Christ stood out. The chief of this band went to pay homage to the abbot, extending the goblet to him. At which point the abbot said, “Age primum et septimum de quatuor,” and all chanted, “In finibus Africae, amen.” Then all sederunt.

When the two facing hosts had thus dispersed, at an order from Abbot Solomon the tables began to be laid, James and Andrew brought a bale of hay, Adam settled himself in the center, Eve lay down on a leaf, Cain entered dragging a plow, Abel came with a pail to milk Brunellus, Noah made a triumphal entry rowing the ark, Abraham sat under a tree, Isaac lay on the gold altar of the church, Moses crouched on a stone, Daniel appeared on a catafalque in Malachi’s arms, Tobias stretched out on a bed, Joseph threw himself on a bushel, Benjamin reclined on a sack, and there were others still, but here the vision grew confused. David stood on a mound, John on the floor, Pharaoh on the sand (naturally, I said to myself, but why?), Lazarus on the table, Jesus on the edge of the well, Zaccheus on the boughs of a tree, Matthew on a stool, Raab on stubble, Ruth on straw, Thecla on the window sill (from outside, Adelmo’s pale face appeared, as he warned her it was possible to fall down, down the cliff), Susanna in the garden, Judas among the graves, Peter on the throne, James on a net, Elias on a saddle, Rachel on a bundle. And Paul the apostle, putting down his sword, listened to Esau complain, while Job moaned on the dungheap and Rebecca rushed to his aid with a garment and Judith with a blanket, Hagar with a shroud, and some novices carried a large steaming pot from which leaped Venantius of Salvemec, all red, as he began to distribute pig’s-blood puddings.

The refectory was now becoming more and more crowded, and all were eating at full tilt; Jonas brought some gourds to the table, Isaiah some vegetables, Ezekiel blackberries, Zaccheus sycamore flowers, Adam lemons, Daniel lupins, Pharaoh peppers, Cain cardoons, Eve figs, Rachel apples, Ananias some plums as big as diamonds, Leah onions, Aaron olives, Joseph an egg, Noah grapes, Simeon peach pits, while Jesus was singing the “Dies irae” and gaily poured over all the dishes some vinegar that he squeezed from a little sponge he had taken from the spear of one of the King of France’s archers.

At this point Jorge, having removed his vitra ad legendum, lighted a burning bush; Sarah had provided kindling for it, Jephtha had brought it, Isaac had unloaded it, Joseph had carved it, and while Jacob opened the well and Daniel sat down beside the lake, the servants brought water, Noah wine, Hagar a wineskin, Abraham a calf that Raab tied to a stake while Jesus held out the rope and Elijah bound its feet. Then Absalom hung him by his hair, Peter held out his sword, Cain killed him, Herod shed his blood, Shem threw away his giblets and dung, Jacob added the oil, Molessadon the salt; Antiochus put him on the fire, Rebecca cooked him, and Eve first tasted him and was taken sick, but Adam said not to give it a thought and slapped Severinus on the back as he suggested adding aromatic herbs. Then Jesus broke the bread and passed around some fishes, Jacob shouted because Esau had eaten all the pottage, Isaac was devouring a roast kid, and Jonah a boiled whale, and Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights.

Meanwhile, all came in and out bringing choice game of every shape and color, of which Benjamin always kept the biggest share and Mary the choicest morsel, while Martha complained of always having to wash the dishes. Then they divided up the calf, which had meanwhile grown very big, and John was given the head, Abessalom the brain, Aaron the tongue, Sampson the jaw, Peter the ear, Holofernes the head, Leah the rump, Saul the neck, Jonah the belly, Tobias the gall, Eve the rib, Mary the breast, Elizabeth the vulva, Moses the tail, Lot the legs, and Ezekiel the bones. All the while, Jesus was devouring a donkey, Saint Francis a wolf, Abel a lamb, Eve a moray, the Baptist a locust, Pharaoh an octopus (naturally, I said to myself, but why?), and David was eating Spanish fly, flinging himself on the maiden nigra sed formosa while Sampson bit into a lion’s behind and Thecla fled screaming, pursued by a hairy black spider.

All were obviously drunk by now, and some slipped on the wine, some fell into the jars with only their legs sticking out, crossed like two stakes, and all of Jesus’s fingers were black as he handed out pages of books saying: Take this and eat, these are the riddles of Synphosius, including the one about the fish that is the son of God and your Saviour.

Sprawled on his back, Adam gulped, and the wine came from his rib, Noah cursed Ham in his sleep, Holofernes snored, all unsuspecting, Jonah slept soundly, Peter kept watch till cockcrow, and Jesus woke with a start, hearing Bernard Gui and Bertrand del Poggetto plotting to burn the maiden; and he shouted: Father, if it be thy will, let this chalice pass from me! And some poured badly and some drank well, some died laughing and some laughed dying, some bore vases and some drank from another’s cup. Susanna shouted that she would never grant her beautiful white body to the cellarer and to Salvatore for a miserable beef heart, Pilate wandered around the refectory like a lost soul asking for water to wash his hands, and Fra Dolcino, with his plumed hat, brought the water, then opened his garment, snickering, and displayed his pudenda red with blood, while Cain taunted him and embraced the beautiful Margaret of Trent: and Dolcino fell to weeping and went to rest his head on the shoulder of Bernard Gui, calling him Angelic Pope, Ubertino consoled him with a tree of life, Michael of Cesena with a gold purse, the Marys sprinkled him with unguents, and Adam convinced him to bite into a freshly plucked apple.

And then the vaults of the Aedificium opened and from the heavens descended Roger Bacon on a flying machine, unico homine regente. Then David played his lyre, Salome danced with her seven veils, and at the fall of each veil she blew one of the seven trumpets and showed one of the seven seals, until only the amicta sole remained. Everyone said there had never been such a jolly abbey, and Berengar pulled up everyone’s habit, man and woman, kissing them all on the anus.

Then it was that the abbot flew into a rage, because, he said, he had organized such a lovely feast and nobody was giving him anything; so they all outdid one another in bringing him gifts and treasures, a bull, a lamb, a lion, a camel, a stag, a calf, a mare, a chariot of the sun, the chin of Saint Eubanus, the tail of Saint Ubertina, the uterus of Saint Venantia, the neck of Saint Burgosina engraved like a goblet at the age of twelve, and a copy of the Pentagonum Salomonis. But the abbot started yelling that they were trying to distract his attention with their behavior, and in fact they were looting the treasure crypt, where we all were, and a most precious book had been stolen which spoke of scorpions and the seven trumpets, and he called the King of France’s archers to search all the suspects. And, to everyone’s shame, the archers found a multicolored cloth on Hagar, a gold seal on Rachel, a silver mirror in Thecla’s bosom, a siphon under Benjamin’s arm, a silk coverlet among Judith’s clothes, a spear in Longinus’s hand, and a neighbor’s wife in the arms of Abimelech. But the worst was when they found a black rooster on the girl, black and beautiful she was, like a cat of the same color, and they called her a witch and a Pseudo Apostle, so all flung themselves on her, to punish her. The Baptist decapitated her, Abel cut her open, Adam drove her out, Nebuchadnezzar wrote zodiacal signs on her breast with a fiery hand, Elijah carried her off in a fiery chariot, Noah plunged her in water, Lot changed her into a pillar of salt, Susanna accused her of lust, Joseph betrayed her with another woman, Ananias stuck her into a furnace, Sampson chained her up, Paul flagellated her, Peter crucified her head down, Stephen stoned her, Lawrence burned her on a grate, Bartholomew skinned her, Judas denounced her, the cellarer burned her, and Peter denied everything. Then they all were on that body, flinging excrement on her, farting in her face, urinating on her head, vomiting on her bosom, tearing out her hair, whipping her buttocks with glowing torches. The girl’s body, once so beautiful and sweet, was now lacerated, torn into fragments that were scattered among the glass cases and gold-and-crystal reliquaries of the crypt. Or, rather, it was not the body of the girl that went to fill the crypt, it was the fragments of the crypt that, whirling, gradually composed to form the girl’s body, now something mineral, and then again decomposed and scattered, sacred dust of segments accumulated by insane blasphemy. It was now as if a single immense body had, in the course of millennia, dissolved into its parts, and these parts had been arranged to occupy the whole crypt, more splendid than the ossarium of the dead monks but not unlike it, and as if the substantial form of man’s very body, the masterpiece of creation, had shattered into plural and separate accidental forms, thus becoming the image of its own opposite, form no longer ideal but earthly, of dust and stinking fragments, capable of signifying only death and destruction….

Now I could no longer find the banqueters or the gifts they had brought, it was as if all the guests of the symposium were now in the crypt, each mummified in its own residue, each the diaphanous synecdoche of itself, Rachel as a bone, Daniel as a tooth, Sampson as a jaw, Jesus as a shred of purple garment. As if, at the end of the banquet, the feast transformed into the girl’s slaughter, it had become the universal slaughter, and here I was seeing its final result, the bodies (no, the whole terrestrial and sublunar body of those ravenous and thirsting feasters) transformed into a single dead body, lacerated and tormented like Dolcino’s body after his torture, transformed into a loathsome and resplendent treasure, stretched out to its full extent like the hide of a skinned and hung animal, which still contained, however, petrified, the leather sinews, the viscera, and all the organs, and even the features of the face. The skin with each of its folds, wrinkles, and scars, with its velvety plains, its forest of hairs, the dermis, the bosom, the pudenda, having become a sumptuous damask, and the breasts, the nails, the horny formations under the heel, the threads of the lashes, the watery substance of the eyes, the flesh of the lips, the thin spine of the back, the architecture of the bones, everything reduced to sandy powder, though nothing had lost its own form or respective placement, the legs emptied and limp as a boot, their flesh lying flat like a chasuble with all the scarlet embroidery of the veins, the engraved pile of the viscera, the intense and mucous ruby of the heart, the pearly file of even teeth arranged like a necklace, with the tongue as a pink-and-blue pendant, the fingers in a row like tapers, the seal of the navel reknotting the threads of the unrolled carpet of the belly … From every corner of the crypt, now I was grinned at, whispered to, bidden to death by this macrobody divided among glass cases and reliquaries and yet reconstructed in its vast and irrational whole, and it was the same body that at the supper had eaten and tumbled obscenely but here, instead, appeared to me fixed in the intangibility of its deaf and blind ruin. And Ubertino, seizing me by the arm, digging his nails into my flesh, whispered to me: “You see, it is the same thing, what first triumphed in its folly and took delight in its jesting now is here, punished and rewarded, liberated from the seduction of the passions, rigidified by eternity, consigned to the eternal frost that is to preserve and purify it, saved from corruption through the triumph of corruption, because nothing more can reduce to dust that which is already dust and mineral substance, mors est quies viatoris, finis est omnis laboris….”

But suddenly Salvatore entered the crypt, glowing like a devil, and cried, “Fool! Can’t you see this is the great Lyotard? What are you afraid of, my little master? Here is the cheese in batter!” And suddenly the crypt was bright with reddish flashes and it was again the kitchen, but not so much a kitchen as the inside of a great womb, mucous and viscid, and in the center an animal black as a raven and with a thousand hands was chained to a huge grate, and it extended those limbs to snatch everybody around it, and as the peasant when thirsty squeezes a bunch of grapes, so that great beast squeezed those it had snatched so that its hands broke them all, the legs of some, the heads of others, and then it sated itself, belching a fire that seemed to stink more than sulphur. But, wondrous mystery, that scene no longer instilled fear in me, and I was surprised to see that I could watch easily that “good devil” (so I thought) who after all was none other than Salvatore, because now I knew all about the mortal human body, its sufferings and its corruption, and I feared nothing any more. In fact, in the light of that flame, which now seemed mild and convivial, I saw again all the guests of the supper, now restored to their original forms, singing and declaring that everything was beginning again, and among them was the maiden, whole and most beautiful, who said to me, “It is nothing, it is nothing, you will see: I shall be even more beautiful than before; just let me go for a moment and burn on the pyre, then we shall meet again here!” And she displayed to me, God have mercy on me, her vulva, into which I entered, and I found myself in a beautiful cave, which seemed the happy valley of the golden age, dewy with waters and fruits and trees that bore cheeses in batter. And all were thanking the abbot for the lovely feast, and they showed him their affection and good humor by pushing him, kicking him, tearing his clothes, laying him on the ground, striking his rod with rods, as he laughed and begged them to stop tickling him. And, riding mounts whose nostrils emitted clouds of brimstone, the Friars of the Poor Life entered, carrying at their belts purses full of gold with which they transformed wolves into lambs and lambs into wolves and crowned them emperor with the approval of the assembly of the people, who sang praises of God’s infinite omnipotence. “Ut cachinnis dissolvatur, torqueatur rictibus!” Jesus shouted, waving his crown of thorns. Pope John came in, cursing the confusion and saying, “At this rate I don’t know where it all will end!” But everyone mocked him and, led by the abbot, went out with the pigs to hunt truffles in the forest. I was about to follow them when in a corner I saw William, emerging from the labyrinth and carrying in his hand the magnet, which pulled him rapidly northward. “Do not leave me, master!” I shouted. “I, too, want to see what is in the finis Africae!”

“You have already seen it!” William answered, far away by now. And I woke up as the last words of the funeral chant were ending in the church:

Lacrimosa dies illa

qua resurget ex favilla
iudicandus homo reus:
buic ergo parce deus!
Pie Iesu domine
dona eis requiem.

A sign that my vision, rapid like all visions, if it had not lasted the space of an “amen,” as the saying goes, had lasted almost the length of a “Dies irae.”

AFTER TERCE

In which William explains Adso’s dream to him.

Dazed, I came out through the main door and discovered a little crowd there. The Franciscans were leaving, and William had come down to say good-bye to them.

I joined in the farewells, the fraternal embraces. Then I asked William when the others would be leaving, with the prisoners. He told me they had already left, half an hour before, while we were in the treasure crypt, or perhaps, I thought, when I was dreaming.

For a moment I was aghast, then I recovered myself. Better so. I would not have been able to bear the sight of the condemned (I meant the poor wretched cellarer and Salvatore … and, of course, I also meant the girl) being dragged off, far away and forever. And besides, I was still so upset by my dream that my feelings seemed numb.

As the caravan of Minorites headed for the gate, to leave the abbey, William and I remained in front of the church, both melancholy, though for different reasons. Then I decided to tell my master my dream. Though the vision had been multiform and illogical, I remembered it with amazing clarity, image by image, action by action, word by word. And so I narrated it, omitting nothing, because I knew that dreams are often mysterious messages in which learned people can read distinct prophecies.

William listened to me in silence, then asked me, “Do you know what you have dreamed?”

“Exactly what I told you…” I replied, at a loss.

“Of course, I realize that. But do you know that to a great extent what you tell me has already been written? You have added people and events of these past few days to a picture already familiar to you, because you have read the story of your dream somewhere, or it was told you as a boy, in school, in the convent. It is the Coena Cypriani. “

I remained puzzled briefly. Then I remembered. He was right! Perhaps I had forgotten the title, but what adult monk or unruly young novice has not smiled or laughed over the various visions, in prose or rhyme, of this story, which belongs to the tradition of the paschal season and the ioca monachorum? Though the work is banned or execrated by the more austere among novice masters, there is still not a convent in which the monks have not whispered it to one another, variously condensed and revised, while some piously copied it, declaring that behind a veil of mirth it concealed secret moral lessons, and others encouraged its circulation because, they said, through its jesting, the young could more easily commit to memory certain episodes of sacred history. A verse version had been written for Pope John VIII, with the inscription “I loved to jest; accept me, dear Pope John, in my jesting. And, if you wish, you can also laugh.” And it was said that Charles the Bald himself had staged it, in the guise of a comic sacred mystery, in a rhymed version to entertain his dignitaries at supper.

And how many scoldings had I received from my masters when, with my companions, I recited passages from it! I remembered an old friar at Melk who used to say that a virtuous man like Cyprian could not have written such an indecent thing, such a sacrilegious parody of Scripture, worthier of an infidel and a buffoon than of a holy martyr…. For years I had forgotten those childish jokes. Why on this day had the Coena reappeared so vividly in my dream? I had always thought that dreams were divine messages, or at worst absurd stammerings of the sleeping memory about things that had happened during the day. I was now realizing that one can also dream books, and therefore dream of dreams.

“I should like to be Artemidorus to interpret your dream correctly,” William said. “But it seems to me that even without Artemidorus’s learning it is easy to understand what happened. In these past days, my poor boy, you have experienced a series of events in which every upright rule seems to have been destroyed. And this morning, in your sleeping mind, there returned the memory of a kind of comedy in which, albeit with other intentions, the world is described upside down. You inserted into that work your most recent memories, your anxieties, your fears. From the marginalia of Adelmo you went on to relive a great carnival where everything seems to proceed in the wrong direction, and yet, as in the Coena, each does what he really did in life. And finally you asked yourself, in the dream, which world is the false one, and what it means to walk head down. Your dream no longer distinguished what is down and what is up, where life is and where death. Your dream cast doubt on the teachings you have received.”

“My dream,” I said virtuously, “not I. But dreams are not divine messages, then; they are diabolical ravings, and they contain no truth!”

“I don’t know, Adso,” William said. “We already have so many truths in our possession that if the day came when someone insisted on deriving a truth even from our dreams, then the day of the Antichrist would truly be at hand. And yet, the more I think of your dream, the more revealing it seems to me. Perhaps not to you, but to me. Forgive me if I use your dreams in order to work out my hypotheses; I know, it is a base action, it should not be done…. But I believe that your sleeping soul understood more things than I have in six days, and awake….”

“Truly?”

“Truly. Or perhaps not. I find your dream revealing because it coincides with one of my hypotheses. But you have given me great help. Thank you.”

“But what was there in my dream that interests you so much? It made no sense, like all dreams!”

“It had another sense like all dreams, and visions. It must be read as an allegory, or an analogy….”

“Like Scripture?”

“A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.”

SEXT

In which the succession of librarians is reconstructed, and there is further information about the mysterious book.

William decided to go back up to the scriptorium, from which he had just come. He asked Benno’s leave to consult the catalogue, and he leafed through it rapidly. “It must be around here,” he said, “I saw it just an hour ago….” He stopped at one page. “Here,” he said, “read this title.”

As a single entry there was a group of four titles, indicating that one volume contained several texts. I read:

“What is it?” I asked.

“It is our book,” William whispered to me. “This is why your, dream reminded me of something. Now I am sure this is it. And in fact”—he glanced quickly at the pages immediately preceding and following—”in fact, here are the books I was thinking about, all together. But this isn’t what I wanted to check. See here. Do you have your tablet? Good. We must make a calculation, and try to remember clearly what Alinardo told us the other day as well as what we heard this morning from Nicholas. Now, Nicholas told us he arrived here about thirty years ago, and Abo had already been named abbot. The abbot before him was Paul of Rimini. Is that right? Let’s say this succession took place around 1290, more or less, it doesn’t matter. Nicholas also told us that, when he arrived, Robert of Bobbio was already librarian. Correct? Then Robert died, and the post was given to Malachi, let’s say at the beginning of this century. Write this down. There is a period, however, before Nicholas came, when Paul of Rimini was librarian. How long was he in that post? We weren’t told. We could examine the abbey ledgers, but I imagine the abbot has them, and for the moment I would prefer not to ask him for them. Let’s suppose Paul was appointed librarian sixty years ago. Write that. Why does Alinardo complain of the fact that, about fifty years ago, he should have been given the post of librarian and instead it went to another? Was he referring to Paul of Rimini?”

“Or to Robert of Bobbio!” I said.

“So it would seem. But now look at this catalogue. As you know, the titles are recorded in the order of acquisition. And who writes them in this ledger? The librarian. Therefore, by the changes of handwriting in these pages we can establish the succession of librarians. Now we will look at the catalogue from the end; the last handwriting is Malachi’s, you see. And it fills only a few pages. The abbey has not acquired many books in these last thirty years. Then, as we work backward, a series of pages begins in a shaky hand. I clearly read the presence of Robert of Bobbio, who was ill. Robert probably did not occupy the position long. And then what do we find? Pages and pages in another hand, straight and confident, a whole series of acquisitions (including the group of books I was examining a moment ago), truly impressive. Paul of Rimini must have worked hard! Too hard, if you recall that Nicholas told us he became abbot while still a young man. But let’s assume that in a few years this voracious reader enriched the abbey with so many books. Weren’t we told he was called Abbas agraphicus because of that strange defect, or illness, which made him unable to write? Then who wrote these pages? His assistant librarian, I would say. But if by chance this assistant librarian were then named librarian, he would then have continued writing, and we would have figured out why there are so many pages here in the same hand. So, then, between Paul and Robert we would have another librarian, chosen about fifty years ago, who was the mysterious rival of Alinardo, who was hoping, as an older man, to succeed Paul. Then this man died, and somehow, contrary to Alinardo’s expectations and the expectations of others, Robert was named in his place.”

“But why are you so sure this is the right scansion? Even granting that this handwriting is the nameless librarian’s, why couldn’t Paul also have written the titles of the still earlier pages?”

“Because among the acquisitions they recorded all bulls and decretals, and these are precisely dated. I mean, if you find here, as you do, the Firma cautela of Boniface the Seventh, dated 1296, you know that text did not arrive before that year, and you can assume it didn’t arrive much later. I have these milestones, so to speak, placed along the years, so if I grant that Paul of Rimini became librarian in 1265 and abbot in 1275, and I find that his hand, or the hand of someone else who is not Robert of Bobbio, lasts from 1265 to 1285, then I discover a discrepancy of ten years.”

My master was truly very sharp. “But what conclusions do you draw from this discrepancy?” I asked.

“None,” he answered. “Only some premises.”

Then he got up and went to talk with Benno, who was staunchly at his post, but with a very unsure air. He was still behind his old desk and had not dared take over Malachi’s, by the catalogue. William addressed him with some coolness. We had not forgotten the unpleasant scene of the previous evening.

“Even in your new and powerful position, Brother Librarian, I trust you will answer a question. That morning when Adelmo and the others were talking here about witty riddles, and Berengar made the first reference to the finis Africae, did anybody mention the Coena Cypriani?“

“Yes,” Benno said, “didn’t I tell you? Before they talked about the riddles of Symphosius, Venantius himself mentioned the Coena, and Malachi became furious, saying it was an ignoble work and reminding us that the abbot had forbidden anyone to read it….”

“The abbot?” William said. “Very interesting. Thank you, Benno.”

“Wait,” Benno said, “I want to talk with you.” He motioned us to follow him out of the scriptorium, onto the stairs going down to the kitchen, so the others could not hear him. His lips were trembling.

“I’m frightened, William,” he said. “They’ve killed Malachi. Now I am the one who knows too many things. Besides, the group of Italians hate me…. They do not want another foreign librarian…. I believe the others were murdered for this very reason…. I’ve never told you about Alinardo’s hatred for Malachi, his bitterness.”

“Who was it who took the post from him, years ago?”

“That I don’t know: he always talks about it vaguely, and anyway it’s ancient history. They must all be dead now. But the group of Italians around Alinardo speaks often … spoke often of Malachi as a straw man … put here by someone else, with the complicity of the abbot…. Not realizing it, I … I have become involved in the conflict of the two hostile factions…. I became aware of it only this morning…. Italy is a land of conspiracies: they poison popes here, so just imagine a poor boy like me…. Yesterday I hadn’t understood, I believed that book was responsible for everything, but now I’m no longer sure. That was the pretext: you’ve seen that the book was found but Malachi died all the same….I must … I want to … I would like to run away. What do you advise me to do?”

“Stay calm. Now you ask advice, do you? Yesterday evening you seemed ruler of the world. Silly youth, if you had helped me yesterday we would have prevented this last crime. You are the one who gave Malachi the book that brought him to his death. But tell me one thing at least. Did you have that book in your hands, did you touch it, read it? Then why are you not dead?”

“I don’t know. I swear I didn’t touch it; or, rather, I touched it when I took it in the laboratory but without opening it; I hid it inside my habit, then went and put it under the pallet in my cell. I knew Malachi was watching me, so I came back at once to the scriptorium. And afterward, when Malachi offered to make me his assistant, I gave him the book. That’s the whole story.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t even open it.”

“Yes, I did open it before hiding it, to make sure it really was the one you were also looking for. It began with an Arabic manuscript, then I believe one in Syriac, then there was a Latin text, and finally one in Greek….”

I remembered the abbreviations we had seen in the catalogue. The first two titles were listed as “ar.” and “syr.” It was the book! But William persisted: “You touched it and you are not dead. So touching it does not kill. And what can you tell me about the Greek text? Did you look at it?”

“Very briefly. Just long enough to realize it had no title; it began as if a part were missing….”

“Liber acephalus…” William murmured.

“I tried to read the first page, but the truth is that my Greek is very poor. And then my curiosity was aroused by another detail, connected with those same pages in Greek. I did not leaf through all of them, because I was unable to. The pages were—how can I explain?—damp, stuck together. It was hard to separate one from the other. Because the parchment was odd … softer than other parchments, and the first page was rotten, and almost crumbling. It was … well, strange.”

“‘Strange’: the very word Severinus used,” William said.

“The parchment did not seem like parchment…. It seemed like cloth, but very fine…” Benno went on.

“Charta lintea, or linen paper,” William said. “Had you never seen it?”

“I had heard of it, but I don’t believe I ever saw it before. It is said to be very costly, and delicate. That’s why it is rarely used. The Arabs make it, don’t they?”

“They were the first. But it is also made here in Italy, at Fabriano. And also … Why, of course, naturally!” William’s eyes shone. “What a beautiful and interesting revelation! Good for you, Benno! I thank you! Yes, I imagine that here in the library charta lintea must be rare, because no very recent manuscripts have arrived. And besides, many are afraid linen paper will not survive through the centuries like parchment, and perhaps that is true. Let us imagine, if they wanted something here that was not more perennial than bronze … Charta lintea, then? Very well. Good-bye. And don’t worry. You’re in no danger.”

We went away from the scriptorium, leaving Benno calmer, if not totally reassured.

The abbot was in the refectory. William went to him and asked to speak with him. Abo, unable to temporize, agreed to meet us in a short while at his house.

NONES

In which the abbot refuses to listen to William, discourses on the language of gems, and expresses a wish that there be no further investigation of the recent unhappy events.

The abbot’s apartments were over the chapter hall, and from the window of the large and sumptuous main room, where he received us, you could see, on that clear and windy day, beyond the roof of the abbatial church, the massive Aedificium.

The abbot, standing at the window, was in fact contemplating it, and he pointed it out to us with a solemn gesture.

“An admirable fortress,” he said, “whose proportions sum up the golden rule that governed the construction of the ark. Divided into three stories, because three is the number of the Trinity, three were the angels who visited Abraham, the days Jonah spent in the belly of the great fish, and the days Jesus and Lazarus passed in the sepulcher; three times Christ asked the Father to let the bitter chalice pass from him, and three times he hid himself to pray with the apostles. Three times Peter denied him, and three times Christ appeared to his disciples after the Resurrection. The theological virtues are three, and three are the holy languages, the parts of the soul, the classes of intellectual creatures, angels, men, and devils; there are three kinds of sound—vox, flatus, pulsus—and three epochs of human history, before, during, and after the law.”

“A wondrous harmony of mystical relations,” William agreed.

“But the square shape also,” the abbot continued, “is rich in spiritual lessons. The cardinal points are four, and the seasons, the elements, and heat, cold, wet, and dry; birth, growth, maturity, and old age; the species of animals, celestial, terrestrial, aerial, and aquatic; the colors forming the rainbow; and the number of years required to make a leap year.”

“Oh, to be sure,” William said, “and three plus four is seven, a superlatively mystical number, whereas three multiplied by four makes twelve, like the apostles, and twelve by twelve makes one hundred forty-four, which is the number of the elect.” And to this last display of mystical knowledge of the ideal world of numbers, the abbot had nothing further to add. Thus William could come to the point.

“We must talk about the latest events, on which I have reflected at length,” he said.

The abbot turned his back to the window and looked straight at William with a stern face. “At too-great length, perhaps. I must confess, Brother William, that I expected more of you. Almost six days have passed since you arrived here; four monks have died besides Adelmo, two have been arrested by the Inquisition—it was justice, to be sure, but we could have avoided this shame if the inquisitor had not been obliged to concern himself with the previous crimes—and finally the meeting over which I presided has—precisely because of all these wicked deeds—had a pitiful outcome….”

William remained silent, embarrassed. Without question, the abbot was right.

“That is true,” he admitted. “I have not lived up to your expectations, but I will explain why, Your Sublimity. These crimes do not stem from a brawl or from some vendetta among the monks, but from deeds that, in their turn, originate in the remote history of the abbey….”

The abbot looked at him uneasily. “What do you mean? I myself realize that the key is not that miserable affair of the cellarer, which has intersected another story. But the other, that other which I may know but cannot discuss … I hoped it was clear, and that you would speak to me about it….”

“Your Sublimity is thinking of some deed he learned about in confession….” The abbot looked away, and William continued: “If Your Magnificence wants to know whether I know, without having learned it from Your Magnificence, that there were illicit relations between Berengar and Adelmo, and between Berengar and Malachi, well, yes, everyone in the abbey knows this….”

The abbot blushed violently. “I do not believe it useful to speak of such things in the presence of this novice. And I do not believe, now that the meeting is over, that you need him any longer as scribe. Go, boy,” he said to me imperiously. Humiliated, I went. But in my curiosity I crouched outside the door of the hall, which I left ajar, so that I could follow the dialogue.

William resumed speaking: “So, then, these illicit relations, if they did take place, had scant influence on the painful events. The key is elsewhere, as I thought you imagined. Everything turns on the theft and possession of a book, which was concealed in the finis Africae, and which is now there again thanks to Malachi’s intervention, though, as you have seen, the sequence of crimes was not thereby arrested.”

A long silence followed; then the abbot resumed speaking, in a broken, hesitant voice, like someone taken aback by unexpected revelations. “This is impossible … you … How do you know about the finis Africae? Have you violated my ban and entered the library?”

William ought to have told the truth, but the abbot’s rage would have known no bounds. Yet, obviously my master did not want to lie. He chose to answer the question with another question: “Did Your Magnificence not say to me, at our first meeting, that a man like me, who had described Brunellus so well without ever having seen him, would have no difficulty picturing places to which he did not have access?”

“So that is it,” Abo said. “But why do you think what you think?”

“How I arrived at my conclusion is too long a story. But a series of crimes was committed to prevent many from discovering something that it was considered undesirable for them to discover. Now all those who knew something of the library’s secrets, whether rightly or through trickery, are dead. Only one person remains: yourself.”

“Do you wish to insinuate … you wish to insinuate…” the abbot said.

“Do not misunderstand me,” said William, who probably had indeed wished to insinuate. “I say there is someone who knows and wants no one else to know. As the last to know, you could be the next victim. Unless you tell me what you know about that forbidden book, and, especially, who in the abbey might know what you know, and perhaps more, about the library.”

“It is cold in here,” the abbot said. “Let us go out.”

I moved rapidly away from the door and waited for them at the head of the stairs. The abbot saw me and smiled at me.

“How many upsetting things this young monk must have heard in the past few days! Come, boy, do not allow yourself to be too distressed. It seems to me that more plots have been imagined than really exist….”

He raised one hand and allowed the daylight to illuminate a splendid ring he wore on his fourth finger, the emblem of his power. The ring sparkled with all the brilliance of its stones.

“You recognize it, do you not?” he said to me. “The symbol of my authority, but also of my burden. It is not an ornament: it is a splendid syllogy of the divine word whose guardian I am.” With his fingers he touched the stone—or, rather, the arrangement of variegated stones composing that admirable masterpiece of human art and nature. “This is amethyst,” he said, “which is the mirror of humility and reminds us of the ingenuousness and sweetness of Saint Matthew; this is chalcedony, mark of charity, symbol of the piety of Joseph and Saint James the Greater; this is jasper, which bespeaks faith and is associated with Saint Peter; and sardonyx, sign of martyrdom, which recalls Saint Bartholomew; this is sapphire, hope and contemplation, the stone of Saint Andrew and Saint Paul; and beryl, sound doctrine, learning, and longanimity, the virtues of Saint Thomas…. How splendid the language of gems is,” he went on, lost in his mystical vision, “which the lapidaries of tradition have translated from the reasoning of Aaron and the description of the heavenly Jerusalem in the book of the apostle. For that matter, the walls of Zion were decked with the same jewels that decorated the pectoral of Moses’s brother, except for carbuncle, agate, and onyx, which, mentioned in Exodus, are replaced in the Apocalypse by chalcedony, sardonyx, chrysoprase, and jacinth.”

He moved the ring and dazzled my eyes with its sparkling, as if he wanted to stun me. “Marvelous language, is it not? For other fathers stones signify still other things. For Pope Innocent the Third the ruby announced calm and patience; the garnet, charity. For Saint Bruno aquamarine concentrates theological learning in the virtue of its purest rays. Turquoise signifies joy; sardonyx suggests the seraphim; topaz, the cherubim; jasper, thrones: chrysolite, dominions; sapphire, the virtues; onyx, the powers; beryl, principalities; ruby, archangels; and emerald, angels. The language of gems is multiform; each expresses several truths, according to the sense of the selected interpretation, according to the context in which they appear. And who decides what is the level of interpretation and what is the proper context? You know, my boy, for they have taught you: it is authority, the most reliable commentator of all and the most invested with prestige, and therefore with sanctity. Otherwise how to interpret the multiple signs that the world sets before our sinner’s eyes, how to avoid the misunderstandings into which the Devil lures us? Mind you: it is extraordinary how the Devil hates the language of gems, as Saint Hildegard testifies. The foul beast sees in it a message illuminated by different meanings or levels of knowledge, and he would like to destroy it because he, the Enemy, senses in the splendor of stones the echo of the marvels in his possession before his fall, and he understands that this radiance is produced by fire, which is his torment.” He held out the ring for me to kiss, and I knelt. He stroked my head. “And so, boy, you must forget the things, no doubt erroneous, that you have heard these days. You have entered the noblest, the greatest order of all; of this order I am an abbot, and you are under my jurisdiction. Hear my command: forget, and may your lips be sealed forever. Swear.”

Moved, subjugated, I would certainly have sworn. And you, my good reader, would not be able now to read this faithful chronicle of mine. But at this point William intervened, not perhaps to prevent me from swearing, but in an instinctive reaction, out of irritation, to interrupt the abbot, to break that spell he had surely cast.

“What does the boy have to do with it? I asked you a question, I warned you of a danger, I asked you to tell me a name…. Do you now wish me, too, to kiss the ring and swear to forget what I have learned or what I suspect?”

“Ah, you…” the abbot said sadly, “I do not expect a mendicant friar to understand the beauty of our traditions, or respect the reticence, the secrets, the mysteries of charity … yes, charity, and the sense of honor, and the vow of silence on which our greatness is based…. You have spoken to me of a strange story, an incredible story. About a banned book that has caused a chain of murders, about someone who knows what only I should know … Tales, meaningless accusations. Speak of it, if you wish: no one will believe you. And even if some element of your fanciful reconstruction were true …well, now everything is once more under my control, my jurisdiction. I will look into this, I have the means, I have the authority. At the very beginning I made a mistake, asking an outsider, however wise, however worthy of trust, to investigate things that are my responsibility alone. But you understood, as you have told me; I believed at the outset that it involved a violation of the vow of chastity, and (imprudent as I was) I wanted someone else to tell me what I had heard in confession. Well, now you have told me. I am very grateful to you for what you have done or have tried to do. The meeting of the legations has taken place, your mission here is over. I imagine you are anxiously awaited at the imperial court; one does not deprive oneself at length of a man like you. I give you permission to leave the abbey. Today it is perhaps late: I do not want you to travel after sunset, for the roads are not safe. You will leave tomorrow morning, early. Oh, do not thank me, it has been a joy to have you here, a brother among brothers, honoring you with our hospitality. You may withdraw now with your novice to prepare your baggage. I will say good-bye to you again tomorrow at dawn. I thank you, with all my heart. Naturally, it is not necessary for you to continue your investigations. Do not disturb the monks further. You may go.”

It was more than a dismissal, it was an expulsion. William said good-bye and we went down the stairs.

“What does this mean?” I asked. I no longer understood anything.

“Try to formulate a hypothesis. You must have learned how it is done.”

“Actually, I have learned I must formulate at least two, one in opposition to the other, and both incredible. Very well, then…” I gulped: formulating hypotheses made me nervous. “First hypothesis: the abbot knew everything already and imagined you would discover nothing. Second hypothesis: the abbot never suspected anything (about what I don’t know, because I don’t know what’s in your mind). But, anyhow, he went on thinking it was all because of a quarrel between … between sodomite monks…. Now, however, you have opened his eyes, he has suddenly understood something terrible, has thought of a name, has a precise idea about who is responsible for the crimes. But at this point he wants to resolve the matter by himself and wants to be rid of you, in order to save the honor of the abbey.”

“Good work. You are beginning to reason well. But you see already that in both cases our abbot is concerned for the good name of his monastery. Murderer or next victim as he may be, he does not want defamatory news about this holy community to travel beyond these mountains. Kill his monks, but do not touch the honor of his abbey. Ah, by…” William was now becoming infuriated. “That bastard of a feudal lord, that peacock who gained fame for having been the Aquinas’s gravedigger, that inflated wineskin who exists only because he wears a ring as big as the bottom of a glass! Proud, proud, all of you Cluniacs, worse than princes, more baronial than barons!”

“Master…” I ventured, hurt, in a reproachful tone.

“You be quiet, you are made of the same stuff. Your band are not simple men, or sons of the simple. If a peasant comes along you may receive him, but as I saw yesterday, you do not hesitate to hand him over to the secular arm. But not one of your own, no; he must be shielded. Abo is capable of identifying the wretch, stabbing him in the treasure crypt, and passing out his kidneys among the reliquaries, provided the honor of the abbey is saved…. Have a Franciscan, a plebeian Minorite, discover the rat’s nest of this holy house? Ah, no, this is something Abo cannot allow at any price. Thank you, Brother William, the Emperor needs you, you see what a beautiful ring I have, good-bye. But now the challenge is not just a matter between me and Abo, it is between me and the whole business: I am not leaving these walls until I have found out. He wants me to leave tomorrow morning, does he? Very well, it’s his house; but by tomorrow morning I must know. I must.”

“You must? Who obliges you now?”

“No one ever obliges us to know, Adso. We must, that is all, even if we comprehend imperfectly.”

I was still confused and humiliated by William’s words against my order and its abbots. And I tried to justify Abo in part, formulating a third hypothesis, exercising a skill at which, it seemed to me, I was becoming very dextrous. “You have not considered a third possibility, master,” I said. “We had noticed these past days, and this morning it seemed quite clear to us after Nicholas’s confidences and the rumors we heard in church, that there is a group of Italian monks reluctant to tolerate the succession of foreign librarians; they accuse the abbot of not respecting tradition, and, as I understand it, they hide behind old Alinardo, thrusting him forward like a standard, to ask for a different government of the abbey. So perhaps the abbot fears our revelations could give his enemies a weapon, and he wants to settle the question with great prudence….”

“That is possible. But he is still an inflated wineskin, and he will get himself killed.”

We were in the cloister. The wind was growing angrier all the time, the light dimmer, even if it was just past nones. The day was approaching its sunset, and we had very little time left.

“It is late,” William said, “and when a man has little time, he must take care to maintain his calm. We must act as if we had eternity before us. I have a problem to solve: how to penetrate the finis Africae, because the final answer must be there. Then we must save some person, I have not yet determined which. Finally, we should expect something from the direction of the stables, which you will keep an eye on…. Look at all the bustle….”

In fact, the space between the Aedificium and the cloister was unusually animated. A moment before, a novice, coming from the abbot’s house, had run toward the Aedificium. Now Nicholas was coming out of it, heading for the dormitories. In one corner, that morning’s group, Pacificus, Aymaro, and Peter, were deep in discussion with Alinardo, as if trying to convince him of something.

Then they seemed to reach a decision. Aymaro supported the still-reluctant Alinardo, and went with him toward the abbatial residence. They were just entering as Nicholas came out of the dormitory, leading Jorge in the same direction. Seeing the two Italians enter, he whispered something into Jorge’s ear, and the old man shook his head. They continued, however, toward the chapter house.

“The abbot is taking the situation in hand…” William murmured skeptically. From the Aedificium were emerging more monks, who belonged in the scriptorium, and they were immediately followed by Benno, who came toward us, more worried than ever.

“There is unrest in the scriptorium,” he told us. “Nobody is working, they are all talking among themselves…. What is happening?”

“What’s happening is that the people who until this morning seemed the most suspect are all dead. Until yesterday everyone was on guard against Berengar, foolish and treacherous and lascivious, then the cellarer, a suspect heretic, and finally Malachi, so generally disliked…. Now they don’t know whom to be on guard against, and they urgently need to find an enemy, or a scapegoat. And each suspects the others; some are afraid, like you; others have decided to frighten someone else. You are all too agitated. Adso, take a look at the stables every now and then. I am going to get some rest.”

I should have been amazed: to go and rest when he had only a few hours left did not seem the wisest decision. But by now I knew my master. The more relaxed his body, the more ebullient his mind.

BETWEEN VESPERS AND COMPLINE

In which long hours of bewilderment are briefly narrated.

It is difficult for me to narrate what happened in the hours that followed, between vespers and compline.

William was absent. I roamed around the stables but noticed nothing abnormal. The grooms were bringing in the animals, made nervous by the wind; otherwise all was calm.

I entered the church. Everyone was already in his place among the stalls, but the abbot noticed Jorge was absent. With a gesture he delayed the beginning of the office. He called for Benno, to dispatch him to look for the old man, but Benno was not there. Someone pointed out that he was probably making the scriptorium ready for its evening closing. The abbot, annoyed, said it had been decided that Benno would close nothing because he did not know the rules. Aymaro of Alessandria rose from his stall: “If Your Paternity agrees, I will go and summon him….”

“No one asked anything of you,” the abbot said curtly, and Aymaro sat back down in his place, not without casting an inscrutable glance at Pacificus of Tivoli. The abbot called for Nicholas, who was not present. Someone reminded him that Nicholas was preparing supper, and the abbot made a gesture of annoyance, as if he were displeased to reveal to all that he was upset.

“I want Jorge here,” he cried. “Find him! You go!” he ordered the master of novices.

Another pointed out to him that Alinardo was also missing. “I know,” the abbot said, “he is not well.” I was near Peter of Sant’Albano and heard him say to his neighbor, Gunzo of Nola, in a vulgar dialect from central Italy which I partly understood, “I should think so. Today, when he came out after the colloquy, the poor old man was distraught. Abo behaves like the whore of Avignon!”

The novices were bewildered; with their innocent, boyish sensitivity they felt the tension reigning in choir, as I felt it. Long moments of silence and embarrassment ensued. The abbot ordered some psalms to be recited and he picked at random three that were not prescribed for vespers by the Rule. All looked at one another, then began praying in low voices. The novice master came back, followed by Benno, who took his seat, his head bowed. Jorge was not in the scriptorium or in his cell. The abbot commanded that the office begin.

When it was over, before everyone headed for supper, I went to call William. He was stretched out on his pallet, dressed, motionless. He said he had not realized it was so late. I told him briefly what had happened. He shook his head.

At the door of the refectory we saw Nicholas, who a few hours earlier had been accompanying Jorge. William asked him whether the old man had gone in immediately to see the abbot. Nicholas said Jorge had had to wait a long time outside the door, because Alinardo and Aymaro of Alessandria were in the hall. After Jorge was received, he remained inside for some time, while Nicholas waited for him. Then he came out and asked Nicholas to accompany him to the church, still deserted an hour before vespers.

The abbot saw us talking with the cellarer. “Brother William,” he admonished, “are you still investigating?” He bade William sit at his table, as usual. For Benedictines hospitality is sacred.

The supper was more silent than usual, and sad. The abbot ate listlessly, oppressed by grim thoughts. At the end he told the monks to hurry to compline.

Alinardo and Jorge were still absent. The monks pointed to the blind man’s empty place and whispered. When the office was finished, the abbot asked all to say a special prayer for the health of Jorge of Burgos. It was not clear whether he meant physical health or eternal health. All understood that a new calamity was about to befall the community. Then the abbot ordered each monk to hurry, with greater alacrity than usual, to his own pallet. He commanded that no one, and he emphasized the words “no one,” should remain in circulation outside the dormitory. The frightened novices were the first to leave, cowls over their faces, heads bowed, without exchanging the remarks, the nudges, the flashing smiles, the sly and concealed trippings with which they usually provoked one another (for novices, though young monks, are still boys, and the reproaches of their master are of little avail in preventing them all from behaving like boys, as their tender age demands).

When the adults filed out, I fell into line, unobtrusively, behind the group that by now had been characterized to me as “the Italians.” Pacificus was murmuring to Aymaro, “Do you really believe Abo doesn’t know where Jorge is?” And Aymaro answered, “He might know, and know that from where Jorge is he will never return. Perhaps the old man wanted too much, and Abo no longer wants him….”

As William and I pretended to retire to the pilgrims’ hospice, we glimpsed the abbot re-entering the Aedificium through the still-open door of the refectory. William advised waiting a while; once the grounds were empty of every presence, he told me to follow him. We rapidly crossed the empty area and entered the church.

AFTER COMPLINE

In which, almost by chance, William discovers the secret of entering the finis Africae.

Like a pair of assassins, we lurked near the entrance, behind a column, whence we could observe the chapel with the skulls.

“Abo has gone to close the Aedificium,” William said. “When he has barred the doors from the inside, he can only come out through the ossarium.”

“And then?”

“And then we will see what he does.”

We did not discover what he did. An hour went by and he still had not reappeared. He’s gone into the finis Africae, I said. Perhaps, William answered. Eager to formulate more hypotheses, I added: Perhaps he came out again through the refectory and has gone to look for Jorge. And William answered: That is also possible. Perhaps Jorge is already dead, I imagined further. Perhaps he is in the Aedificium and is killing the abbot. Perhaps they are both in some other place and some other person is lying in wait for them. What did “the Italians” want? And why was Benno so frightened? Was it perhaps only a mask he had assumed, to mislead us? Why had he lingered in the scriptorium during vespers, if he didn’t know how to close the scriptorium or how to get out? Did he want to essay the passages of the labyrinth?

“All is possible,” William said. “But only one thing is happening, or has happened, or is about to happen. And at last divine Providence is endowing us with a radiant certitude.”

“What is that?” I asked, full of hope.

“That Brother William of Baskerville, who now has the impression of having understood everything, does not know how to enter the finis Africae. To the stables, Adso, to the stables.”

“And what if the abbot finds us?”

“We will pretend to be a pair of ghosts.”

To me this did not seem a practical solution, but I kept silent. William was growing uneasy. We came out of the north door and crossed the cemetery, while the wind was whistling loudly and I begged the Lord not to make us encounter two ghosts, for the abbey, on that night, did not lack for souls in torment. We reached the stables and heard the horses, more nervous than ever because of the fury of the elements. The main door of the building had, at the level of a man’s chest, a broad metal grating, through which the interior could be seen. In the darkness we discerned the forms of the horses. I recognized Brunellus, the first on the left. To his right, the third animal in line raised his head, sensing our presence, and whinnied. I smiled. “Tertius equi,” I said.

“What?” William asked.

“Nothing. I was remembering poor Salvatore. He wanted to perform God knows what magic with that horse, and with his Latin he called him ‘tertius equi.’ Which would be the u.“

“The u?” asked William, who had heard my prattle without paying much attention to it.

“Yes, because ‘tertius equi’ does not mean the third horse, but the third of the horse, and the third letter of the word ‘equus’ is u. But this is all nonsense….”

William looked at me, and in the darkness I seemed to see his face transformed. “God bless you, Adso!” he said to me. “Why, of course, suppositio materialis, the discourse is presumed de dicto and not de re…. What a fool I am!” He gave himself such a great blow on the forehead that I heard a clap, and I believe he hurt himself. “My boy, this is the second time today that wisdom has spoken through your mouth, first in dream and now waking! Run, run to your cell and fetch the lamp, or, rather, both the lamps we hid. Let no one see you, and join me in church at once! Ask no questions! Go!”

I asked no questions and went. The lamps were under my bed, already filled with oil, and I had taken care to trim them in advance. I had the flint in my habit. With the two precious instruments clutched to my chest, I ran into the church.

William was under the tripod and was rereading the parchment with Venantius’s notes.

“Adso,” he said to me, “‘primum et septimum de quatuor’ does not mean the first and seventh of four, but of the four, the word ‘four’!” For a moment I still did not understand, but then I was enlightened: “Super thronos viginti quatuor! The writing! The verse! The words are carved over the mirror!”

“Come,” William said, “perhaps we are still in time to save a life!”

“Whose?” I asked, as he was manipulating the skulls and opening the passage to the ossarium.

“The life of someone who does not deserve it,” he said. We were already in the underground passage, our lamps alight, moving toward the door that led to the kitchen.

I said before that at this point you pushed a wooden door and found yourself in the kitchen, behind the fireplace, at the foot of the circular staircase that led to the scriptorium. And just as we were pushing that door, we heard to our left some muffled sounds within the wall. They came from the wall beside the door, where the row of niches with skulls and bones ended. Instead of a last niche, there was a stretch of blank wall of large squared blocks of stone, with an old plaque in the center that had some worn monograms carved on it. The sounds came, it seemed, from behind the plaque, or else from above the plaque, partly beyond the wall, and partly almost over our heads.

If something of the sort had happened the first night, I would immediately have thought of dead monks. But by now I tended to expect worse from living monks. “Who can that be?” I asked.

William opened the door and emerged behind the fireplace. The blows were heard also along the wall that flanked the stairs, as if someone were prisoner inside the wall, or else in that thickness (truly vast) that presumably existed between the inner wall of the kitchen and the outer wall of the south tower.

“Someone is shut up inside there,” William said. “I have wondered all along whether there were not another access to the finis Africae, in this Aedificium so full of passages. Obviously there is. From the ossarium, before you come up into the kitchen, a stretch of wall opens, and you climb up a staircase parallel to this, concealed in the wall, which leads right to the blind room.”

“But who is in there?”

“The second person. One is in the finis Africae, another has tried to reach him, but the one above must have blocked the mechanism that controls the entrances. So the visitor is trapped. And he is making a great stir because, I imagine, there cannot be much air in that narrow space.”

“Who is it? We must save him!”

“We shall soon know who it is. And as for saving him, that can only be done by releasing the mechanism from above: we don’t know the secret at this end. Let’s hurry upstairs.”

So we went up to the scriptorium, and from there to the labyrinth, and we quickly reached the south tower. Twice I had to curb my haste, because the wind that came through the slits that night created currents that, penetrating those passages, blew moaning through the rooms, rustling the scattered pages on the desks, so that I had to shield the flame with my hand.

Soon we were in the mirror room, this time prepared for the game of distortion awaiting us. We raised the lamps to illuminate the verse that surmounted the frame. Super thronos viginti quatuor … At this point the secret was quite clear: the word “quatuor” has seven letters, and we had to press on the q and the r. I thought, in my excitement, to do it myself: I rapidly set the lamp down on the table in the center of the room. But I did this nervously, and the flame began to lick the binding of a book also set there.

“Watch out, idiot!” William cried, and with a puff blew out the flame. “You want to set fire to the library?”

I apologized and started to light the lamp again. “It doesn’t matter,” William said, “mine is enough. Take it and give me light, because the legend is too high and you couldn’t reach it. We must hurry.”

“And what if there is somebody armed in there?” I asked, as William, almost groping, sought the fatal letters, standing on tiptoe, tall as he was, to touch the apocalyptic verse.

“Give me light, by the Devil, and never fear: God is with us!” he answered me, somewhat incoherently. His fingers were touching the q of “quatuor,” and, standing a few paces back, I saw better than he what he was doing. I have already said that the letters of the verses seemed carved or incised in the wall: apparently those of the word “quatuor” were metal outlines, behind which a wondrous mechanism had been placed and walled up. When it was pushed forward, the q made a kind of sharp click, and the same thing happened when William pressed on the r. The whole frame of the mirror seemed to shudder, and the glass surface snapped back. The mirror was a door, hinged on its left side. William slipped his hand into the opening now created between the right edge and the wall, and pulled toward himself. Creaking, the door opened out, in our direction. William slipped through the opening and I scuttled behind him, the lamp high over my head.

Two hours after compline, at the end of the sixth day, in the heart of the night that was giving birth to the seventh day, we entered the finis Africae.

SEVENTH DAY

NIGHT

In which, if it were to summarize the prodigious revelations of which it speaks, the title would have to be as long as the chapter itself, contrary to usage.

We found ourselves on the threshold of a room similar in shape to the other three heptagonal blind rooms, dominated by a strong musty odor, as of mildewed books. The lamp, which I held up high, first illuminated the vault; then, as I moved my arm downward, to right and left, the flame cast a vague light on the distant shelves along the walls. Finally, in the center, we saw a table covered with papers, and behind the table a seated figure, who seemed to be waiting for us in the darkness, immobile, if he was still alive. Even before the light revealed his face, William spoke.

“Happy night, venerable Jorge,” he said. “Were you waiting for us?”

The lamp now, once we had taken a few steps forward, illuminated the face of the old man, looking at us as if he could see.

“Is that you, William of Baskerville?” he asked. “I have been waiting for you since this afternoon before vespers, when I came and closed myself in here. I knew you would arrive.”

“And the abbot?” William asked. “Is he the one making that noise in the secret stairway?”

Jorge hesitated for a moment. “Is he still alive?” he asked. “I thought he would already have suffocated.”

“Before we start talking,” William said, “I would like to save him. You can open from this side.”

“No,” Jorge said wearily, “not any longer. The mechanism is controlled from below, by pressing on the plaque, and up here a lever snaps, which opens a door back there, behind that case.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Next to the case you could see a wheel with some counterweights, which controls the mechanism from up here. But when I heard the wheel turning, a sign that Abo had entered down below, I yanked at the rope that holds the weights, and the rope broke. Now the passage is closed on both sides, and you could never repair that device. The abbot is dead.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“Today, when he sent for me, he told me that thanks to you he had discovered everything. He did not yet know what I had been trying to protect—he has never precisely understood the treasures and the ends of the library. He asked me to explain what he did not know. He wanted the finis Africae to be opened. The Italians had asked him to put an end to what they call the mystery kept alive by me and my predecessors. They are driven by the lust for new things….”

“And you no doubt promised him you would come here and put an end to your life as you had put an end to the lives of the others, in such a way that the abbey’s honor would be saved and no one would know anything. Then you told him the way to come, later, and check. But instead you waited for him, to kill him. Didn’t you think he might enter through the mirror?”

“No, Abo is too short; he would never have been able to reach the verse by himself. I told him about the other passage, which I alone still knew. It is the one I used for so many years, because it was simpler in the darkness. I had only to reach the chapel, then follow the bones of the dead to the end of the passage.”

“So you had him come here, knowing you would kill him….”

“I could no longer trust him. He was frightened. He had become famous because at Fossanova he managed to get a body down some circular stairs. Undeserved glory. Now he is dead because he was unable to climb his own stairway.”

“You have been using it for forty years. When you realized you were going blind and would no longer be able to control the library, you acted shrewdly. You had a man you could trust elected abbot; and as librarian you first had him name Robert of Bobbio, whom you could direct as you liked, and then Malachi, who needed your help and never took a step without consulting you. For forty years you have been master of this abbey. This is what the Italian group realized, this is what Alinardo kept repeating, but no one would listen to him because they considered him mad by now. Am I right? But you were still awaiting me, and you couldn’t block the mirror entrance, because the mechanism is set in the wall. Why were you waiting for me? How could you be sure I would arrive?” William asked, but from his tone it was clear he had already guessed the answer and was expecting it as a reward for his own skill.

“From the first day I realized you would understand. From your voice, from the way you drew me to debate on a subject I did not want mentioned. You were better than the others: you would have arrived at the solution no matter what. You know that it suffices to think and to reconstruct in one’s own mind the thoughts of the other. And then I heard you were asking the other monks questions, all of them the right ones. But you never asked questions about the library, as if you already knew its every secret. One night I came and knocked at your cell, and you were not in. You had to be here. Two lamps had disappeared from the kitchen, I heard a servant say. And finally, when Severinus came to talk to you about a book the other day in the narthex, I was sure you were on my trail.”

“But you managed to get the book away from me. You went to Malachi, who had had no idea of the situation. In his jealousy, the fool was still obsessed with the idea that Adelmo had stolen his beloved Berengar, who by then craved younger flesh. Malachi didn’t understand what Venantius had to do with this business, and you confused his thinking even further. You probably told him Berengar had been intimate with Severinus, and as a reward Severinus had given him a book from the finis Africae; I don’t know exactly what you told him. Crazed with jealousy, Malachi went to Severinus and killed him. Then he didn’t have time to hunt for the book you had described to him, because the cellarer arrived. Is that what happened?”

“More or less.”

“But you didn’t want Malachi to die. He had probably never looked at the books of the finis Africae, for he trusted you, respected your prohibitions. He confined himself to arranging the herbs at evening to frighten any intruders. Severinus supplied him with them. This is why Severinus let Malachi enter the infirmary the other day: it was his regular visit to collect the fresh herbs he prepared daily, by the abbot’s order. Have I guessed?”

“You have guessed. I did not want Malachi to die. I told him to find the book again, by whatever means, and bring it back here without opening it. I told him it had the power of a thousand scorpions. But for the first time the madman chose to act on his own initiative. I did not want him to die: he was a faithful agent. But do not repeat to me what you know: I know that you know. I do not want to feed your pride; you already see to that on your own. I heard you this morning in the scriptorium questioning Benno about the Coena Cypriani. You were very close to the truth. I do not know how you discovered the secret of the mirror, but when I learned from the abbot that you had mentioned the finis Africae, I was sure you would come shortly. This is why I was waiting for you. So, now, what do you want?”

“I want,” William said, “to see the last manuscript of the bound volume that contains an Arabic text, a Syriac one, and an interpretation or a transcription of the Coena Cypriani. I want to see that copy in Greek, made perhaps by an Arab, or by a Spaniard, that you found when, as assistant to Paul of Rimini, you arranged to be sent back to your country to collect the finest manuscripts of the Apocalypse in León and Castile, a booty that made you famous and respected here in the abbey and caused you to win the post of librarian, which rightfully belonged to Alinardo, ten years your senior. I want to see that Greek copy written on linen paper, which was then very rare and was manufactured in Silos, near Burgos, your home. I want to see the book you stole there after reading it, to keep others from reading it, and you hid it here, protecting it cleverly, and you did not destroy it because a man like you does not destroy a book, but simply guards it and makes sure no one touches it. I want to see the second book of the Poetics of Aristotle, the book everyone has believed lost or never written, and of which you hold perhaps the only copy.”

“What a magnificent librarian you would have been, William,” Jorge said, with a tone at once admiring and regretful. “So you know everything. Come, I believe there is a stool on your side of the table. Sit. Here is your prize.”

William sat and put down the lamp, which I had handed him, illuminating Jorge’s face from below. The old man took a volume that lay before him and passed it to William. I recognized the binding: it was the book I had opened in the infirmary, thinking it an Arabic manuscript.

“Read it, then, leaf through it, William,” Jorge said. “You have won.”

William looked at the volume but did not touch it. From his habit he took a pair of gloves, not his usual mitts with the fingertips exposed, but the ones Severinus was wearing when we found him dead. Slowly he opened the worn and fragile binding. I came closer and bent over his shoulder. Jorge, with his sensitive hearing, caught the noise I made. “Are you here, too, boy?” he said. “I will show it to you, too … afterward.”

William rapidly glanced over the first pages. “It is an Arabic manuscript on the sayings of some fool, according to the catalogue,” he said. “What is it?”

“Oh, silly legends of the infidels, which hold that fools utter clever remarks that amaze even their priests and delight their caliphs…”

“The second is a Syriac manuscript, but according to the catalogue it is the translation of a little Egyptian book on alchemy. How does it happen to be in this collection?”

“It is an Egyptian work from the third century of our era. Coherent with the work that follows, but less dangerous. No one would lend an ear to the ravings of an African alchemist. He attributes the creation of the world to divine laughter….” He raised his face and recited, with the prodigious memory of a reader who for forty years now had been repeating to himself things read when he still had the gift of sight: “‘The moment God laughed seven gods were born who governed the world, the moment he burst out laughing light appeared, at his second laugh appeared water, and on the seventh day of his laughing appeared the soul….’ Folly. Likewise the work that comes after, by one of the countless idiots who set themselves to glossing the Coena… But these are not what interest you.”

William, in fact, had rapidly passed over the pages and had come to the Greek text. I saw immediately that the pages were of a different, softer material, the first almost worn away, with a part of the margin consumed, spattered with pale stains, such as time and dampness usually produce on other books. William read the opening lines, first in Greek, then translating into Latin, and then he continued in this language so that I, too, could learn how the fatal book began:

In the first book we dealt with tragedy and saw how, by arousing pity and fear, it produces catharsis, the purification of those feelings. As we promised, we will now deal with comedy (as well as with satire and mime) and see how, in inspiring the pleasure of the ridiculous, it arrives at the purification of that passion. That such passion is most worthy of consideration we have already said in the book on the soul, inasmuch as—alone among the animals—man is capable of laughter. We will then define the type of actions of which comedy is the mimesis, then we will examine the means by which comedy excites laughter, and these means are actions and speech. We will show how the ridiculousness of actions is born from the likening of the best to the worst and vice versa, from arousing surprise through deceit, from the impossible, from violation of the laws of nature, from the irrelevant and the inconsequent, from the debasing of the characters, from the use of comical and vulgar pantomime, from disharmony, from the choice of the least worthy things. We will then show how the ridiculousness of speech is born from the misunderstandings of similar words for different things and different words for similar things, from garrulity and repetition, from play on words, from diminutives, from errors of pronunciation, and from barbarisms.

William translated with some difficulty, seeking the right words, pausing now and then. As he translated he smiled, as if he recognized things he was expecting to find. He read the first page aloud, then stopped, as if he were not interested in knowing more, and rapidly leafed through the following pages. But after a few pages he encountered resistance, because near the upper corner of the side edge, and along the top, some pages had stuck together, as happens when the damp and deteriorating papery substance forms a kind of sticky paste. Jorge realized that the rustle of pages had ceased, and he urged William on.

“Go on, read it, leaf through it. It is yours, you have earned it.”

William laughed, seeming rather amused. “Then it is not true that you consider me so clever, Jorge! You cannot see: I have gloves on. With my fingers made clumsy like this, I cannot detach one page from the next. I should proceed with bare hands, moistening my fingers with my tongue, as I happened to do this morning while reading in the scriptorium, so that suddenly that mystery also became clear to me. And I should go on leafing like that until a good portion of the poison had passed to my mouth. I am speaking of the poison that you, one day long ago, took from the laboratory of Severinus. Perhaps you were already worried then, because you had heard someone in the scriptorium display curiosity, either about the finis Africae or about the lost book of Aristotle, or about both. I believe you kept the ampoule for a long time, planning to use it the moment you sensed danger. And you sensed that days ago, when Venantius came too close to the subject of this book, and at the same time Berengar, heedless, vain, trying to impress Adelmo, showed he was less secretive than you had hoped. So you came and set your trap. Just in time, because a few nights later Venantius got in, stole the book, and avidly leafed through it, with an almost physical voracity. He soon felt ill and ran to seek help in the kitchen. Where he died. Am I mistaken?”

“No. Go on.”

“The rest is simple. Berengar finds Venantius’s body in the kitchen, fears there will be an inquiry, because, after all, Venantius got into the Aedificium at night thanks to Berengar’s prior revelation to Adelmo. He doesn’t know what to do; he loads the body on his shoulders and flings it into the jar of blood, thinking everyone will be convinced Venantius drowned.”

“And how do you know that was what happened?”

“You know it as well. I saw how you reacted when they found a cloth stained with Berengar’s blood. With that cloth the foolhardy man had wiped his hands after putting Venantius in the jar. But since Berengar had disappeared, he could only have disappeared with the book, which by this point had aroused his curiosity, too. And you were expecting him to be found somewhere, not bloodstained but poisoned. The rest is clear. Severinus finds the book, because Berengar went first to the infirmary to read it, safe from indiscreet eyes. Malachi, at your instigation, kills Severinus, then dies himself when he comes back here to discover what was so forbidden about the object that had made him a murderer. And thus we have an explanation for all the corpses…. What a fool…”

“Who?”

“I. Because of a remark of Alinardo’s, I was convinced the series of crimes followed the sequence of the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse. Hail for Adelmo, and his death was a suicide. Blood for Venantius, and there it had been a bizarre notion of Berengar’s; water for Berengar himself, and it had been a random act; the third part of the sky for Severinus, and Malachi had struck him with the armillary sphere because it was the only thing he found handy. And finally scorpions for Malachi … Why did you tell him that the book had the power of a thousand scorpions?”

“Because of you. Alinardo had told me about his idea, and then I heard from someone that you, too, found it persuasive…. I became convinced that a divine plan was directing these deaths, for which I was not responsible. And I told Malachi that if he were to become curious he would perish in accordance with the same divine plan; and so he did.”

So, then … I conceived a false pattern to interpret the moves of the guilty man, and the guilty man fell in with it. And it was this same false pattern that put me on your trail. Everyone nowadays is obsessed with the book of John, but you seemed to me the one who pondered it most, and not so much because of your speculations about the Antichrist as because you came from the country that has produced the most splendid Apocalypses. One day somebody told me it was you who had brought the most beautiful codices of this book to the library. Then, another day, Alinardo was raving about a mysterious enemy who had been sent to seek books in Silos (my curiosity was piqued when he said this enemy had returned prematurely into the realm of darkness: at first it might have seemed the man he was speaking of had died young, but he was referring to your blindness). Silos is near Burgos, and this morning, in the catalogue, I found a series of acquisitions, all of them Spanish Apocalypses, from the period when you had succeeded or were about to succeed Paul of Rimini. And in that group of acquisitions there was this book also. But I couldn’t be positive of my reconstruction until I learned that the stolen book was on linen paper. Then I remembered Silos, and I was sure. Naturally, as the idea of this book and its venomous power gradually began to take shape, the idea of an apocalyptic pattern began to collapse, though I couldn’t understand how both the book and the sequence of the trumpets pointed to you. But I understood the story of the book better because, directed by the apocalyptic pattern, I was forced more and more to think of you, and your debates about laughter. So that this evening, when I no longer believed in the apocalyptic pattern, I insisted on watching the stables, and in the stables, by pure chance, Adso gave me the key to entering the finis Africae.

I cannot follow you, Jorge said. You are proud to show me how, following the dictates of your reason, you arrived at me, and yet you have shown me you arrived here by following a false reasoning. What do you mean to say to me?

To you, nothing. I am disconcerted, that is all. But it is of no matter. I am here.

The Lord was sounding the seven trumpets. And you, even in your error, heard a confused echo of that sound.

You said this yesterday evening in your sermon. You are trying to convince yourself that this whole story proceeded according to a divine plan, in order to conceal from yourself the fact that you are a murderer.

I have killed no one. Each died according to his destiny because of his sins. I was only an instrument.

Yesterday you said that Judas also was an instrument. That does not prevent him from being damned.

I accept the risk of damnation. The Lord will absolve me, because He knows I acted for His glory. My duty was to protect the library.

A few minutes ago you were ready to kill me, too, and also this boy….

You are subtler, but no better than the others.

And now what will happen, now that I have eluded the trap?

We shall see, Jorge answered. I do not necessarily want your death; perhaps I will succeed in convincing you. But first tell me: how did you guess it was the second book of Aristotle?

Your anathemas against laughter would surely not have been enough for me, or what little I learned about your argument with the others. At first I didn’t understand their significance. But there were references to a shameless stone that rolls over the plain, and to cicadas that will sing from the ground, to venerable fig trees. I had already read something of the sort: I verified it during these past few days. These are examples that Aristotle used in the first book of the Poetics, and in the Rhetoric. Then I remembered that Isidore of Seville defines comedy as something that tells of stupra virginum et amores meretricum—how shall I put it?—of less than virtuous loves…. Gradually this second book took shape in my mind as it had to be. I could tell you almost all of it, without reading the pages that were meant to poison me. Comedy is born from the komai—that is, from the peasant villages—as a joyous celebration after a meal or a feast. Comedy does not tell of famous and powerful men, but of base and ridiculous creatures, though not wicked; and it does not end with the death of the protagonists. It achieves the effect of the ridiculous by showing the defects and vices of ordinary men. Here Aristotle sees the tendency to laughter as a force for good, which can also have an instructive value: through witty riddles and unexpected metaphors, though it tells us things differently from the way they are, as if it were lying, it actually obliges us to examine them more closely, and it makes us say: Ah, this is just how things are, and I didn’t know it. Truth reached by depicting men and the world as worse than they are or than we believe them to be, worse in any case than the epics, the tragedies, lives of the saints have shown them to us. Is that it?

Fairly close. You reconstructed it by reading other books?

Many of which Venantius was working on. I believe Venantius had been hunting for this book for some time. He must have read in the catalogue the indications I also read, and must have been convinced this was the book he was seeking. But he didn’t know how to enter the finis Africae. When he heard Berengar speak of it with Adelmo, then he was off like a dog on the track of a hare.

That is what happened. I understood at once. I realized the moment had come when I would have to defend the library tooth and nail….

And you spread the ointment. It must have been a hard task … in the dark….

By now my hands see more than your eyes. I had taken a brush from Severinus, and I also used gloves. It was a good idea, was it not? It took you a long time to arrive at it….

Yes. I was thinking of a more complex device, a poisoned pin or something of the sort. I must say that your solution was exemplary: the victim poisoned himself when he was alone, and only to the extent that he wanted to read….

I realized, with a shudder, that at this moment these two men, arrayed in a mortal conflict, were admiring each other, as if each had acted only to win the other’s applause. The thought crossed my mind that the artifices Berengar used to seduce Adelmo, and the simple and natural acts with which the girl had aroused my passion and my desire, were nothing compared with the cleverness and mad skill each used to conquer the other, nothing compared with the act of seduction going on before my eyes at that moment, which had unfolded over seven days, each of the two interlocutors making, as it were, mysterious appointments with the other, each secretly aspiring to the other’s approbation, each fearing and hating the other.

But now tell me, William was saying, why? Why did you want to shield this book more than so many others? Why did you hide—though not at the price of crime—treatises on necromancy, pages that may have blasphemed against the name of God, while for these pages you damned your brothers and have damned yourself? There are many other books that speak of comedy, many others that praise laughter. Why did this one fill you with such fear?

Because it was by the Philosopher. Every book by that man has destroyed a part of the learning that Christianity had accumulated over the centuries. The fathers had said everything that needed to be known about the power of the Word, but then Boethius had only to gloss the Philosopher and the divine mystery of the Word was transformed into a human parody of categories and syllogism. The book of Genesis says what has to be known about the composition of the cosmos, but it sufficed to rediscover the Physics of the Philosopher to have the universe reconceived in terms of dull and slimy matter, and the Arab Averroës almost convinced everyone of the eternity of the world. We knew everything about the divine names, and the Dominican buried by Abo—seduced by the Philosopher—renamed them, following the proud paths of natural reason. And so the cosmos, which for the Areopagite revealed itself to those who knew how to look up at the luminous cascade of the exemplary first cause, has become a preserve of terrestrial evidence for which they refer to an abstract agent. Before, we used to look to heaven, deigning only a frowning glance at the mire of matter; now we look at the earth, and we believe in the heavens because of earthly testimony. Every word of the Philosopher, by whom now even saints and prophets swear, has overturned the image of the world. But he had not succeeded in overturning the image of God. If this book were to become … had become an object for open interpretation, we would have crossed the last boundary.

But what frightened you in this discussion of laughter? You cannot eliminate laughter by eliminating the book.

No, to be sure. But laughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh. It is the peasant’s entertainment, the drunkard’s license; even the church in her wisdom has granted the moment of feast, carnival, fair, this diurnal pollution that releases humors and distracts from other desires and other ambitions…. Still, laughter remains base, a defense for the simple, a mystery desecrated for the plebeians. The apostle also said as much: it is better to marry than to burn. Rather than rebel against God’s established order, laugh and enjoy your foul parodies of order, at the end of the meal, after you have drained jugs and flasks. Elect the king of fools, lose yourselves in the liturgy of the ass and the pig, play at performing your saturnalia head down…. But here, here—now Jorge struck the table with his finger, near the book William was holding open—here the function of laughter is reversed, it is elevated to art, the doors of the world of the learned are opened to it, it becomes the object of philosophy, and of perfidious theology…. You saw yesterday how the simple can conceive and carry out the most lurid heresies, disavowing the laws of God and the laws of nature. But the church can deal with the heresy of the simple, who condemn themselves on their own, destroyed by their ignorance. The ignorant madness of Dolcino and his like will never cause a crisis in the divine order. He will preach violence and will die of violence, will leave no trace, will be consumed as carnival is consumed, and it does not matter whether during the feast the epiphany of the world upside down will be produced on earth for a brief time. Provided the act is not transformed into plan, provided this vulgar tongue does not find a Latin that translates it. Laughter frees the villein from fear of the Devil, because in the feast of fools the Devil also appears poor and foolish, and therefore controllable. But this book could teach that freeing oneself of the fear of the Devil is wisdom. When he laughs, as the wine gurgles in his throat, the villein feels he is master, because he has overturned his position with respect to his lord; but this book could teach learned men the clever and, from that moment, illustrious artifices that could legitimatize the reversal. Then what in the villein is still, fortunately, an operation of the belly would be transformed into an operation of the brain. That laughter is proper to man is a sign of our limitation, sinners that we are. But from this book many corrupt minds like yours would draw the extreme syllogism, whereby laughter is man’s end! Laughter, for a few moments, distracts the villein from fear. But law is imposed by fear, whose true name is fear of God. This book could strike the Luciferine spark that would set a new fire to the whole world, and laughter would be defined as the new art, unknown even to Prometheus, for canceling fear. To the villein who laughs, at that moment, dying does not matter: but then, when the license is past, the liturgy again imposes on him, according to the divine plan, the fear of death. And from this book there could be born the new destructive aim to destroy death through redemption from fear. And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts? For centuries the doctors and the fathers have secreted perfumed essences of holy learning to redeem, through the thought of that which is lofty, the wretchedness and temptation of that which is base. And this book—considering comedy a wondrous medicine, with its satire and mime, which would produce the purification of the passions through the enactment of defect, fault, weakness—would induce false scholars to try to redeem the lofty with a diabolical reversal: through the acceptance of the base. This book could prompt the idea that man can wish to have on earth (as your Bacon suggested with regard to natural magic) the abundance of the land of Cockaigne. But this is what we cannot and must not have. Look at the young monks who shamelessly read the parodizing buffoonery of the Coena Cypriani. What a diabolical transfiguration of the Holy Scripture! And yet as they read it they know it is evil. But on the day when the Philosopher’s word would justify the marginal jests of the debauched imagination, or when what has been marginal would leap to the center, every trace of the center would be lost. The people of God would be transformed into an assembly of monsters belched forth from the abysses of the terra incognita, and at that moment the edge of the known world would become the heart of the Christian empire, the Arimaspi on the throne of Peter, Blemmyes in the monasteries, dwarfs with huge bellies and immense heads in charge of the library! Servants laying down the law, we (but you, too, then) obeying, in the absence of any law. A Greek philosopher (whom your Aristotle quotes here, an accomplice and foul auctoritas) said that the seriousness of opponents must be dispelled with laughter, and laughter opposed with seriousness. The prudence of our fathers made its choice: if laughter is the delight of the plebeians, the license of the plebeians must be restrained and humiliated, and intimidated by sternness. And the plebeians have no weapons for refining their laughter until they have made it an instrument against the seriousness of the spiritual shepherds who must lead them to eternal life and rescue them from the seductions of belly, pudenda, food, their sordid desires. But if one day somebody, brandishing the words of the Philosopher and therefore speaking as a philosopher, were to raise the weapon of laughter to the condition of subtle weapon, if the rhetoric of conviction were replaced by the rhetoric of mockery, if the topics of the patient construction of the images of redemption were to be replaced by the topics of the impatient dismantling and upsetting of every holy and venerable image—oh, that day even you, William, and all your knowledge, would be swept away!

Why? I would match my wit with the wit of others. It would be a better world than the one where the fire and red-hot iron of Bernard Gui humiliate the fire and red-hot iron of Dolcino.

You yourself would by then be caught in the Devil’s plot. You would fight on the other side at the field of Armageddon, where the final conflict must take place. But by that day the church must be able to impose once again its rule on the conflict. Blasphemy does not frighten us, because even in the cursing of God we recognize the deformed image of the wrath of Jehovah, who curses the rebellious angels. We are not afraid of the violence of those who kill the shepherds in the name of some fantasy of renewal, because it is the same violence as that of the princes who tried to destroy the people of Israel. We are not afraid of the severity of the Donatists, the mad suicide of the Circumcellions, the lust of the Bogomils, the proud purity of the Albigensians, the flagellants’ need for blood, the evil madness of the Brothers of the Free Spirit: we know them all and we know the root of their sins, which is also the root of our holiness. We are not afraid, and, above all, we know how to destroy them—better, how to allow them to destroy themselves, arrogantly carrying to its zenith the will to die that is born from their own nadir. Indeed, I would say their presence is precious to us, it is inscribed in the plan of God, because their sin prompts our virtue, their cursing encourages our hymn of praise, their undisciplined penance regulates our taste for sacrifice, their impiety makes our piety shine, just as the Prince of Darkness was necessary, with his rebellion and his desperation, to make the glory of God shine more radiantly, the beginning and end of all hope. But if one day—and no longer as plebeian exception, but as ascesis of the learned, devoted to the indestructible testimony of Scripture—the art of mockery were to be made acceptable, and to seem noble and liberal and no longer mechanical; if one day someone could say (and be heard). ‘I laugh at the Incarnation,’ then we would have no weapons to combat that blasphemy, because it would summon the dark powers of corporal matter, those that are affirmed in the fart and the belch, and the fart and the belch would claim the right that is only of the spirit, to breathe where they list!

Lycurgus had a statue erected to laughter.

You read that in the libellus of Cloritian, who tried to absolve mimes of the sin of impiety, and tells how a sick man was healed by a doctor who helped him laugh. What need was there to heal him, if God had established that his earthly day had reached its end?

I don’t believe the doctor cured him. He taught him to laugh at his illness.

Illness is not exorcised. It is destroyed.

With the body of the sick man.

If necessary.

You are the Devil, William said then.

Jorge seemed not to understand. If he had been able to see, I would say he stared at his interlocutor with a dazed look. I? he said.

Yes. They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came. You are the Devil, and like the Devil you live in darkness. If you wanted to convince me, you have failed. I hate you, Jorge, and if I could, I would lead you downstairs, across the ground, naked, with fowl’s feathers stuck in your asshole and your face painted like a juggler and a buffoon, so the whole monastery would laugh at you and be afraid no longer. I would like to smear honey all over you and then roll you in feathers, and take you on a leash to fairs, to say to all: He was announcing the truth to you and telling you that the truth has the taste of death, and you believed, not in his words, but in his grimness. And now I say to you that, in the infinite whirl of possible things, God allows you also to imagine a world where the presumed interpreter of the truth is nothing but a clumsy raven, who repeats words learned long ago.

You are worse than the Devil, Minorite, Jorge said. You are a clown, like the saint who gave birth to you all. You are like your Francis, who de toto corpore fecerat linguam, who preached sermons giving a performance like a mountebank’s, who confounded the miser by putting gold pieces in his hand, who humiliated the nuns’ devotion by reciting the ‘Miserere’ instead of the sermon, who begged in French, and imitated with a piece of wood the movements of a violin player, who disguised himself as a tramp to confound the gluttonous monks, who flung himself naked in the snow, spoke with animals and plants, transformed the very mystery of the Nativity into a village spectacle, called the lamb of Bethlehem by imitating the bleat of a sheep…. It was a good school. Was that Friar Diotisalvi of Florence not a Minorite?

Yes. William smiled. The one who went to the convent of the preachers and said he would not accept food if first they did not give him a piece of Brother John’s tunic to preserve as a relic, and when he was given it he wiped his behind and threw it in the dungheap and with a stick rolled it around in the dung, shouting: Alas, help me, brothers, because I dropped the saint’s relic in the latrine!

This story amuses you, apparently. Perhaps you would like to tell me also the one about that other Minorite Friar Paul Millemosche, who one day fell full length on the ice; when his fellow citizens mocked him and one asked him whether he would not like to lie on something better, he said to the man: Yes, your wife … That is how you and your brothers seek the truth.

That is how Francis taught people to look at things from another direction.

But we have disciplined them. You saw them yesterday, your brothers. They have rejoined our ranks, they no longer speak like the simple. The simple must not speak. This book would have justified the idea that the tongue of the simple is the vehicle of wisdom. This had to be prevented, which I have done. You say I am the Devil, but it is not true: I have been the hand of God.

The hand of God creates; it does not conceal.

There are boundaries beyond which it is not permitted to go. God decreed that certain papers should bear the words ‘hie sunt leones.’

God created the monsters, too. And you. And He wants everything to be spoken of.

Jorge reached out his shaking hands and drew the book to him. He held it open but turned it around, so that William could still see it in the right position. Then why. he said, did He allow this text to be lost over the course of the centuries, and only one copy to be saved, and the copy of that copy, which had ended up God knows where, to remain buried for years in the hands of an infidel who knew no Greek, and then to lie abandoned in the secrecy of an old library, where I, not you, was called by Providence to find it and to hide it for more years still? I know, I know as if I saw it written in adamantine letters, with my eyes, which see things you do not see, I know that this was the will of the Lord, and I acted, interpreting it. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

NIGHT

In which the ecpyrosis takes place, and because of excess virtue the forces of hell prevail.

The old man was silent. He held both hands open on the book, as if caressing its pages, flattening them the better to read them, or as if he wanted to protect the book from a raptor’s talons.

“All of this, in any case, has been to no avail,” William said to him. “Now it is over. I have found you, I have found the book, and the others died in vain.”

“Not in vain,” Jorge said. “Perhaps there were too many of them. And if you needed proof that this book is accursed, you have had it. And to ensure they have not died in vain, one more death will not be too many.”

He spoke, and with his fleshless, diaphanous hands he began slowly tearing to strips and shreds the limp pages of the manuscript, stuffing them into his mouth, slowly swallowing as if he were consuming the host and he wanted to make it flesh of his flesh.

William looked at him, fascinated, and seemed not to grasp what was happening. Then he recovered himself and leaned forward, shouting, “What are you doing?” Jorge smiled, baring his bloodless gums, as a yellowish slime trickled from his pale lips over the sparse white hairs on his chin.

“You were awaiting the sound of the seventh trumpet, were you not? Now listen to what the voice says: Seal what the seven thunders have said and do not write it, take and devour it, it will make bitter your belly but to your lips it will be sweet as honey. You see? Now I seal that which was not to be said, in the grave I become.”

He laughed, he, Jorge. For the first time I heard him laugh…. He laughed with his throat, though his lips did not assume the shape of gaiety, and he seemed almost to be weeping. “You did not expect it, William, not this conclusion, did you? This old man, by the grace of God, wins once more, does he not?” And as William tried to take the book away from him, Jorge, who sensed the movement, feeling the vibration of the air, drew back, clasping the volume to his chest with his left hand while his right went on tearing the pages and cramming them into his mouth.

He was on the other side of the table, and William, who could not reach him, tried abruptly to move around the obstacle. But he knocked over his stool, catching his habit in it, so that Jorge was able to perceive the disturbance. The old man laughed again, louder this time, and with unexpected rapidity thrust out his right hand, groping for the lamp. Guided by the heat, he reached the flame and pressed his hand over it, unafraid of pain, and the light went out. The room was plunged into darkness, and for the last time we heard the laughter of Jorge, who said, “Find me now! Now I am the one who sees best!” Then he was silent and did not make another sound, moving with those silent footsteps that always made his appearances so unexpected; and we heard only, from time to time, in different parts of the room, the sound of the tearing paper.

“Adso!” William cried. “Stay by the door. Don’t let him go out!”

But he had spoken too late, because I, who for some moments had been yearning to fling myself on the old man, had jumped forward when the darkness fell, trying to circle the table on the side opposite the one around which my master had moved. Too late I realized I had enabled Jorge to gain the door, because the old man could move in the dark with extraordinary confidence. We heard a sound of tearing paper behind us—somewhat muffled, because it came from the next room. And at the same time we heard another sound, a harsh, progressive creaking, the groan of hinges.

“The mirror!” William cried. “He is shutting us inside!” Led by the sound, we both rushed toward the entrance; I stumbled over a stool and bruised my leg but paid no heed, because in a flash I realized that if Jorge shut us in we would never get out: in the darkness we would never find the way to open the door, not knowing what had to be maneuvered on this side, or how.

I believe William moved with the same desperation as I did, because I felt him beside me as both of us, reaching the threshold, pressed ourselves against the back of the mirror, which was closing toward us. We arrived in time; the door stopped, then gave way and reopened. Obviously Jorge, sensing the conflict was unequal, had left. We came out of the accursed room, but now we had no idea where the old man was heading, and the darkness was still complete.

All of a sudden I remembered: “Master! I have the flint with me!”

“What are you waiting for, then?” William cried. “Find the lamp and light it!” I rushed back in the darkness, into the finis Africae, groping for the lamp. I found it at once, by divine miracle, then dug inside my scapular and pulled out the flint. My hands were trembling, and two or three times I failed before I was able to light it, as William gasped at the door, “Hurry, hurry!” Finally I made a light.

“Hurry!” William urged me again. “Otherwise the old man will eat up all of Aristotle!”

“And die!” I cried in anguish, overtaking him and joining in the search.

“I don’t care whether he dies, damn the monster!” William cried, peering in every direction, moving at random. “With what he has eaten, his fate is already sealed. But I want the book!”

Then he stopped and added, more calmly, “Wait. If we continue like this, we’ll never find him. Hush: we’ll remain still for a moment.” We stiffened, in silence. And in the silence we heard, not far away, the sound of a body bumping into a case, and the racket of some falling books. “That way!” we shouted, together.

We ran in the direction of the noise, but soon realized we would have to slow our pace. In fact, outside the finis Africae, the library was filled that evening with gusts of air that hissed and moaned, in proportion to the strong wind outside. Heightened by our speed, they threatened to put out our light, so painfully recovered. Since we could not move faster, we would have to make Jorge move more slowly. But William had just the opposite idea and shouted, “We’ve caught you, old man; now we have light!” And it was a wise decision, because the revelation probably upset Jorge, who moved faster, compromising his magic sensibility, his gift for seeing in the darkness. Soon we heard another noise, and. following it, when we entered room Y of YSPANIA, we saw him lying on the floor, the book still in his hands, as he attempted to pull himself to his feet among the books that had spilled from the table he had struck and overturned. He was trying to stand, but he went on tearing the pages, determined to devour his prey as quickly as possible.

By the time we overtook him he was on his feet; sensing our presence, he confronted us, moving backward. His face, in the reddish glow of the lamp, now seemed horrible to us: the features were distorted, a malignant sweat streaked his brow and cheeks, his eyes, usually a deathly white, were bloodshot, from his mouth came scraps of parchment, and he looked like a ravening beast who had stuffed himself and could no longer swallow his food. Disfigured by anxiety, by the menace of the poison now flowing abundantly through his veins, by his desperate and diabolical determination, the venerable figure of the old man now seemed disgusting and grotesque. At other moments he might have inspired laughter, but we, too, were reduced to the condition of animals, dogs stalking their quarry.

We could have taken him calmly, but we fell on him with violence; he writhed, clasped his hands on his chest to defend the volume; I grasped him with my left hand while with my right I tried to hold the lamp high, but I grazed his face with the flame, he sensed the heat, let out a muffled cry, almost a roar, as bits of paper spilled from his mouth, and his right hand let go of the volume, darted toward the lamp, and abruptly tore it from me, flinging it away….

The lamp fell right on the pile of books that had been knocked from the table all in a heap, lying open. The oil spilled out, the fire immediately seized a fragile parchment, which blazed up like a bundle of dry twigs. Everything happened in a few moments, as if for centuries those ancient pages had been yearning for arson and were rejoicing in the sudden satisfaction of an immemorial thirst for ecpyrosis. William realized what was happening and let go of the old man, who, feeling himself free, stepped back a few paces. William hesitated an instant, most likely too long, uncertain whether to seize Jorge again or to hasten to put out the little pyre. One book, older than the others, burned almost immediately, sending up a tongue of flame.

The fine gusts of the wind, which might have extinguished a weak flicker, encouraged the stronger, livelier flame, and even carried sparks flying from it.

“Put out that fire! Quickly!” William cried. “Everything will burn up!”

I rushed toward the blaze, then stopped, because I was unsure what to do. William again moved after me, to come to my aid. We held out our hands as our eyes sought something to smother the fire. I had a flash of inspiration: I slipped my habit over my head and tried to throw it on the heart of the fire. But the flames by now were too high; they consumed my garment and were nourished by it. Snatching back my scorched hands, I turned toward William and saw Jorge, who had approached again, directly behind him. The heat was now so strong that the old man could feel it very easily, so he knew with absolute certainty where the fire was; he flung the Aristotle into it.

In an explosion of ire, William gave the old man a violent push. Jorge slammed into a case, banging his head against one corner. He fell to the ground…. But William, whom I believe I heard utter a horrible curse, paid no heed to him. He turned to the books. Too late. The Aristotle, or what had remained of it after the old man’s meal, was already burning.

Meanwhile, some sparks had flown toward the walls, and already the volumes of another bookcase were crumpling in the fury of the fire. By now, not one but two fires were burning in the room.

William, realizing we would not be able to put them out with our hands, decided to use books to save books. He seized a volume that seemed to him more stoutly bound than the others, more compact, and he tried to use it as a weapon to stifle the hostile element. But, slamming the studded binding on the pyre of glowing books, he merely stirred more sparks. Though he tried to scatter them with his feet, he achieved the opposite effect: fluttering scraps of parchment, half burned, rose and hovered like bats, while the air, allied with its airy fellow element, sent them to kindle the terrestrial matter of further pages.

As misfortune would have it, this was one of the most untidy rooms of the labyrinth. Rolled-up manuscripts hung from the shelves; other books, falling apart, let pages slip from their covers, as from gaping mouths, tongues of vellum dried up by the years; and the table must have held a great number of writings that Malachi (by then unassisted for some days) had neglected to put back in their places. So the room, after the spill Jorge caused, was invaded by parchments waiting only to be transformed into another element.

In no time the place was a brazier, a burning bush. The bookcases themselves also joined in this sacrifice and were beginning to crackle. I realized the whole labyrinth was nothing but an immense sacrificial pyre, all prepared for the first spark.

“Water. We need water!” William was saying, but then he added, “But where can any water be found in this inferno?”

“In the kitchen, down in the kitchen!” I cried.

William looked at me, puzzled, his face flushed by that raging glow. “Yes, but by the time we’ve gone down and come back up … The Devil take it!” he then cried. “This room is lost, in any case, and perhaps the next one as well. Let’s go down at once. I’ll find water, and you rush out to give the alarm. We need a lot of people!”

We found the way toward the stairs: the conflagration lighted the subsequent rooms as well, but more and more faintly, so we crossed the last two almost groping again. Below, the moon dimly illuminated the scriptorium, and from there we went down to the refectory. William rushed into the kitchen; I to the refectory door, fumbling to open it from the inside. I succeeded after a fair amount of labor, for my agitation made me clumsy and inept. I stepped out onto the grass, ran toward the dormitory, then realized I could not wake the monks one by one. I had an inspiration: I went into the church, hunting for the access to the bell tower. When I found it, I grabbed all the ropes, ringing the alarm. I pulled hard, and the central bell rope, as it rose, drew me up with it. In the library the backs of my hands had been burned. My palms were still unhurt, but now I burned them, too, letting them slip along the ropes until they bled and I had to let go.

By then, however, I had made enough noise. I rushed outside in time to see the first monks coming from the dormitory, as I heard in the distance the voices of the servants, who were appearing at the doors of their lodgings. I could not explain myself clearly, because I was unable to formulate words, and the first that came to my lips were in my mother tongue. With bleeding hand I pointed to the windows of the south wing of the Aedificium, at whose alabaster panes there was an abnormal glow. I realized, from the intensity of the light, that the fire had spread to other rooms while I had come down and rung the bells. All the windows of Africa and the whole façade between it and the east tower now flickered with irregular flashes.

“Water! Fetch water!” I shouted.

At first no one understood. The monks were so used to considering the library a sacred and inaccessible place that they could not understand it was threatened by the sort of banal accident that might have befallen a peasant hut. The first who looked up at the windows blessed themselves, murmuring words of fear, and I realized they were thinking of further apparitions. I grabbed their clothing and begged them to understand, until someone finally translated my sobs into human words.

It was Nicholas of Morimondo, who said, “The library is on fire!”

“It is, indeed,” I whispered, sinking to the ground, exhausted.

Nicholas displayed great energy, shouted orders to the servants, gave advice to the monks surrounding him, sent some to open the other doors of the Aedificium, others to seek water and vessels of every kind. He directed those present toward the wells and the water tanks of the abbey. He ordered the cowherds to use the mules and asses to transport jars…. If a man invested with authority had given these orders, he would have been obeyed at once. But the servants were accustomed to taking orders from Remigio, the scribes from Malachi, all of them from the abbot. And, alas, none of those three was present. The monks looked around for the abbot, to ask instructions and solace, and did not find him; only I knew that he was dead, or dying, at that moment, shut up in an airless passage that was now turning into an oven, a bull of Phalaris.

Nicholas shoved the cowherds in one direction, but some other monks, with the best of intentions, pushed them in another. Some of the brothers had obviously lost their heads, others were still dazed with sleep. I tried to explain, now that I had recovered the power of speech, but it must be remembered that I was almost naked, having thrown my habit on the flames, and the sight of a boy, as I was then, bleeding, his face smudged by soot, his body indecently hairless, numbed now by the cold, surely did not inspire much confidence.

Finally Nicholas managed to drag a few brothers and some other men into the kitchen, which in the meantime someone had opened. Another monk had the good sense to bring some torches. We found the place in great disorder, and I realized William must have turned it upside down, seeking water and vessels to carry it.

At that point I saw William himself appear from the door of the refectory, his face singed, his habit smoking. He was carrying a large pot in his hand, and I felt pity for him, pathetic allegory of helplessness. I realized that even if he had succeeded in carrying a pan of water to the second floor without spilling it, and even if he had done so more than once, he could have achieved very little. I recalled the story of Saint Augustine, when he saw a boy trying to scoop up the water of the sea with a spoon: the boy was an angel and did this to make fun of a saint who wanted to understand the mysteries of the divine nature. And, like the angel, William spoke to me, leaning in exhaustion against the door jamb: “It is impossible, we will never do it, not even with all the monks of the abbey. The library is lost.” Unlike the angel, William wept.

I hugged him, as he tore a cloth from a table and tried to cover me. We stopped and, finally defeated, observed what was going on around us.

There was a confused bustle, people going up the spiral staircase bare-handed and encountering others, bare-handed, who had been driven upstairs by their curiosity and were now coming down to look for vessels. Others, cleverer, had immediately started hunting for pans and basins, only to realize there was not sufficient water in the kitchen. Suddenly the great room was invaded by mules, bearing huge jars, and the cowherds driving the animals unloaded them and started to carry up the water. But they did not know how to climb to the scriptorium, and it was a while before some of the scribes told them, and when they went up they bumped into others rushing down, terrified. Jars broke and the water spread over the ground, though other jars were passed up the stairs by willing hands. I followed the group and found myself in the scriptorium. Thick smoke came from the access to the library; the last men who had tried to go up to the east tower were already coming down, coughing, red-eyed, and they announced it was no longer possible to penetrate that hell.

Then I saw Benno. His face distorted, he was coming up from the lower floor with an enormous vessel. He heard what those coming down were saying and he attacked them: “Hell will swallow you all, cowards!” He turned, as if seeking help, and saw me. “Adso,” he cried, “the library … the library…” He did not await my answer, but ran to the foot of the stairs and boldly plunged into the smoke. That was the last time I saw him.

I heard a creaking sound from above. Bits of stone mixed with mortar were falling from the ceiling of the scriptorium. The keystone of a vault, carved in the shape of a flower, came loose and almost landed on my head. The floor of the labyrinth was giving way.

I rushed downstairs and out into the open air. Some willing servants had brought ladders, with which they were trying to reach the windows of the upper floors, to take water up that way. But the highest ladders barely extended to the windows of the scriptorium, and those who had climbed up were unable to open them from the outside. They sent word down to have them opened from within, but at this point nobody dared try to go up there.

Meanwhile, I was looking at the windows of the top floor. The whole library by now must have become a single smoking brazier as the fire raced from room to room, spreading rapidly among the thousands of dry pages. All the windows were alight, a black smoke came from the roof: the fire had already spread to the beams. The Aedificium, which had seemed so solid and tetragonous, revealed in these circumstances its weakness, its cracks, the walls corroded from within, the crumbling stones allowing the flames to reach the wooden elements wherever they were.

Suddenly some windows shattered as if pressed by an inner force, the sparks flew out into the open air, dotting with fluttering glints the darkness of the night. The strong wind had become lighter: a misfortune, because, strong, it might have blown out the sparks, but light, it carried them, stimulating them, and with them made scraps of parchment swirl in the air, the delicate fragments of an inner torch. At that point an explosion was heard: the floor of the labyrinth had given way at some point and its blazing beams must have plunged to the floor below. Now I saw tongues of flame rise from the scriptorium, which was also tenanted by books and cases, and by loose papers, spread on the desks, ready to provoke the sparks. I heard cries of woe from a group of scribes who tore their hair and still thought of climbing up heroically, to recover their beloved parchments. In vain: the kitchen and refectory were now a crossroads of lost souls, rushing in all directions, each hindering the others. People bumped into one another, fell down; those carrying vessels spilled their redemptive contents; the mules brought into the kitchen had sensed the presence of fire and, with a clatter of hoofs, dashed toward the exits, knocking down the human beings and even their own terrified grooms. It was obvious, in any case, that this horde of villeins and of devout, wise, but unskilled men, with no one in command, was blocking even what aid might still have arrived.

The whole abbey was in the grip of disorder, but this was only the beginning of the tragedy. Pouring from the windows and the roof, the triumphant cloud of sparks, fostered by the wind, was now descending on all sides, touching the roof of the church. Everyone knows how the most splendid cathedrals are vulnerable to the sting of fire: the house of God appears beautiful and well defended as the heavenly Jerusalem itself thanks to the stone it proudly displays, but the walls and ceilings are supported by a fragile, if admirable, architecture of wood, and if the church of stone recalls the most venerable forests with its columns rising high, bold as oaks, to the vaults of the ceilings, these columns often have cores of oak—and many of the trappings are also of wood: the altars, the choirs, the painted panels, the benches, the stalls, the candelabra. And so it was with the abbatial church, whose beautiful door had so fascinated me on the first day. The church caught fire in no time. The monks and the whole population of the place then understood that the very survival of the abbey was at stake, and all began rushing even more earnestly, and in even greater confusion, to deal with the new danger.

To be sure, the church was more accessible, more easily defended than the library. The library had been doomed by its own impenetrability, by the mystery that protected it, by its few entrances. The church, maternally open to all in the hour of prayer, was open to all in the hour of succor. But there was no more water, or at least very little could be found stored, and the wells supplied it with natural parsimony and at a slow pace that did not correspond to the urgency of the need. All the monks would have liked to put out the fire of the church, but nobody knew how at this point. Moreover, the fire was spreading from above, and it was difficult to hoist men up to beat on the flames or smother them with dirt or rags. And when the flames arrived from below, it was futile by then to throw earth or sand on them, for the ceiling was crashing down on the firefighters, striking more than a few of them.

And so the cries of regret for the many riches burned were now joined by the cries of pain at seared faces, crushed limbs, bodies buried under a sudden collapse of the high vaults.

The wind had become furious again, and more furiously helped spread the fire. Immediately after the church, the barns and stables caught fire. The terrified animals broke their halters, kicked down the doors, scattered over the grounds, neighing, mooing, bleating, grunting horribly. Sparks caught the manes of many horses, and there were infernal creatures racing across the grass, flaming steeds that trampled everything in their path, without goal or respite. I saw old Alinardo wandering around, not understanding what was happening, knocked down by the magnificent Brunellus, haloed by fire; the old man was dragged in the dust, then abandoned there, a poor shapeless object. But I had neither means nor time to succor him, or to bemoan his end, because similar scenes were taking place everywhere.

The horses in flames had carried the fire to places where the wind had not yet brought it: now the forges were burning, and the novices’ house. Hordes of people were running from one end of the compound to another, for no purpose or for illusory purposes. I saw Nicholas, his head wounded, his habit in shreds, now defeated, kneeling in the path from the gate, cursing the divine curse. I saw Pacificus of Tivoli, who, abandoning all notion of help, was trying to seize a crazed mule as it passed; when he succeeded, he shouted to me to do the same and to flee, to escape that horrid replica of Armageddon.

I wondered where William was, fearing he had been trapped under some collapsing wall. I found him, after a long search, near the cloister. In his hand he had his traveling sack: when the fire was already spreading to the pilgrims’ hospice, he had gone up to his cell to save at least his most precious belongings. He had collected my sack, too, and in it I found something to put on. We paused, breathless, to watch what was happening around us.

By now the abbey was doomed. Almost all its buildings, some more, some less, had been reached by the fire. Those still intact would not remain so for long, because everything, from the natural elements to the confused work of the rescuers, was now contributing to the spread of the fire. Only the parts without buildings remained safe, the vegetable patch, the garden outside the cloister…. Nothing more could be done to save the buildings; abandoning the idea of saving them, we were able to observe everything without danger, standing in an open space.

We looked at the church, now burning slowly, for it is characteristic of these great constructions to blaze up quickly in their wooden parts and then to agonize for hours, sometimes for days. The conflagration of the Aedificium was different. Here inflammable material was much more abundant, and the fire, having spread all through the scriptorium, had invaded the kitchen floor. As for the top floor, where once, and for hundreds of years, there had been the labyrinth, it was now virtually destroyed.

“It was the greatest library in Christendom,” William said. “Now,” he added, “the Antichrist is truly at hand, because no learning will hinder him any more. For that matter, we have seen his face tonight.”

“Whose face?” I asked, dazed.

“Jorge, I mean. In that face, deformed by hatred of philosophy, I saw for the first time the portrait of the Antichrist, who does not come from the tribe of Judas, as his heralds have it, or from a far country. The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical thing because he loved his truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood. Jorge feared the second book of Aristotle because it perhaps really did teach how to distort the face of every truth, so that we would not become slaves of our ghosts. Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”

“But, master,” I ventured, sorrowfully, “you speak like this now because you are wounded in the depths of your spirit. There is one truth, however, that you discovered tonight, the one you reached by interpreting the clues you read over the past few days. Jorge has won, but you have defeated Jorge because you exposed his plot….”

“There was no plot,” William said, “and I discovered it by mistake.”

The assertion was self-contradictory, and I couldn’t decide whether William really wanted it to be. “But it was true that the tracks in the snow led to Brunellus,” I said, “it was true that Adelmo committed suicide, it was true that Venantius did not drown in the jar, it was true that the labyrinth was laid out the way you imagined it, it was true that one entered the finis Africae by touching the word ‘quatuor,’ it was true that the mysterious book was by Aristotle…. I could go on listing all the true things you discovered with the help of your learning….”

“I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand was the relation among signs. I arrived at Jorge through an apocalyptic pattern that seemed to underlie all the crimes, and yet it was accidental. I arrived at Jorge seeking one criminal for all the crimes and we discovered that each crime was committed by a different person, or by no one. I arrived at Jorge pursuing the plan of a perverse and rational mind, and there was no plan, or, rather, Jorge himself was overcome by his own initial design and there began a sequence of causes, and concauses, and of causes contradicting one another, which proceeded on their own, creating relations that did not stem from any plan. Where is all my wisdom, then? I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe.”

“But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something….”

“What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless. Er muoz gelîchesame die leiter abewerfen, so er an ir ufgestigen…. Is that how you say it?”

“That is how it is said in my language. Who told you that?”

“A mystic from your land. He wrote it somewhere, I forget where. And it is not necessary for somebody one day to find that manuscript again. The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.”

“You have no reason to reproach yourself: you did your best.”

“A human best, which is very little. It’s hard to accept the idea that there cannot be an order in the universe because it would offend the free will of God and His omnipotence. So the freedom of God is our condemnation, or at least the condemnation of our pride.”

I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: “But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primigenial chaos? Isn’t affirming God’s absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?”

William looked at me without betraying any feeling in his features, and he said, “How could a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question?” I did not understand the meaning of his words. “Do you mean,” I asked, “that there would be no possible and communicable learning any more if the very criterion of truth were lacking, or do you mean you could no longer communicate what you know because others would not allow you to?”

At that moment a section of the dormitory roof collapsed with a huge din, blowing a cloud of sparks into the sky. Some of the sheep and the goats wandering through the grounds went past us, bleating horribly. A group of servants also went by us, shouting, nearly knocking us down.

“There is too much confusion here,” William said. “Non in commotione, non in commotione Dominus.”

LAST PAGE

The Abbey burned for three days and three nights, and the last efforts were of no avail. As early as that morning of the seventh day of our sojourn in that place, when the survivors were fully aware that no building could be saved, when the finest constructions showed only their ruined outer walls, and the church, as if drawing into itself, swallowed its tower—even at that point everyone’s will to combat the divine chastisement failed. The rush for the last few buckets of water grew more and more listless, while the chapter house and the superb apartments of the abbot were still burning. By the time the fire reached the far side of the various workshops, the servants had long since saved as many objects as they could, and had chosen to beat the countryside to recapture at least some of the livestock, which had fled beyond the walls in the confusion of the night.

I saw some of the servants venture into what remained of the church: I presumed they were trying to get into the crypt to seize some precious object before running away. I do not know whether they succeeded, whether the crypt had not already collapsed, whether the louts did not sink into the bowels of the earth in their attempt to reach the treasure.

Meanwhile, men were coming up from the village to lend a hand or to try to snatch some further booty. The dead for the most part remained among the ruins, which were still red-hot. On the third day, when the wounded had been treated and the corpses found outside had been buried, the monks and all the others collected their belongings and abandoned the still-smoking abbey, as a place accursed. They scattered, I do not know whereto.

William and I left those parts on two horses we found astray in the wood; we considered them res nullius by now. We headed east. When we reached Bobbio again, we began to receive bad news of the Emperor. On arriving in Rome, he had been crowned by the people. Considering any agreement with John now impossible, he had chosen an antipope, Nicholas V. Marsilius had been named spiritual vicar of Rome, but through his fault, or his weakness, things very sad to report were taking place in that city. Priests loyal to the Pope and unwilling to say Mass were tortured, an Augustinian prior had been thrown into the lions’ pit on the Capitoline. Marsilius and John of Jandun had declared John a heretic, and Louis had had him sentenced to death. But the Emperor’s misrule was antagonizing the local lords and depleting public funds. Gradually, as we heard this news, we delayed our descent to Rome, and I realized that William did not want to find himself witnessing events that would dash his hopes.

When we came to Pomposa, we learned that Rome had rebelled against Louis, who had moved back up toward Pisa, while John’s legates were triumphantly entering the papal city.

Meanwhile, Michael of Cesena had realized that his presence in Avignon was producing no results—indeed, he feared for his life—so he had fled, joining Louis in Pisa.

Soon, foreseeing events and learning that the Bavarian would move on to Munich, we reversed our route and decided to proceed there, also because William sensed that Italy was becoming unsafe for him. In the ensuing months and years, Louis saw the alliance of his supporters, the Ghibelline lords, dissolve; and the following year the Antipope Nicholas was to surrender to John, presenting himself with a rope around his neck.

When we came to Munich, I had to take leave of my good master, amid many tears. His destiny was uncertain, and my family preferred for me to return to Melk. After that tragic night when William revealed to me his dismay before the ruins of the abbey, as if by tacit agreement we had not spoken again of that story. Nor did we mention it in the course of our sorrowful farewell.

My master gave me much good advice about my future studies, and presented me with the glasses Nicholas had made for him, since he had his own back again. I was still young, he said to me, but one day they would come in handy (and, truly, I am wearing them on my nose now, as I write these lines). Then he embraced me with a father’s tenderness and dismissed me.

I never saw him again. I learned much later that he had died during the great plague that raged through Europe toward the middle of this century. I pray always that God received his soul and forgave him the many acts of pride that his intellectual vanity had made him commit.

Years later, as a grown man, I had occasion to make a journey to Italy, sent by my abbot. I could not resist temptation, and on my return I went far out of my way to revisit what remained of the abbey.

The two villages on the slopes of the mountain were deserted, the lands around them uncultivated. When I climbed up to the top, a spectacle of desolation and death appeared before my eyes, which moistened with tears.

Of the great and magnificent constructions that once adorned that place, only scattered ruins remained, as had happened before with the monuments of the ancient pagans in the city of Rome. Ivy covered the shreds of walls, columns, the few architraves still intact. Weeds invaded the ground on all sides, and there was no telling where the vegetables and the flowers had once grown. Only the location of the cemetery was recognizable, because of some graves that still rose above the level of the terrain. Sole sign of life, some birds of prey hunted lizards and serpents that, like basilisks, slithered among the stones or crawled over the walls. Of the church door only a few traces remained, eroded by mold. Half of the tympanum survived, and I still glimpsed there, dilated by the elements and dulled by lichens, the left eye of the enthroned Christ, and something of the lion’s face.

The Aedificium, except for the south wall, which was in ruins, seemed yet to stand and defy the course of time. The two outer towers, over the cliff, appeared almost untouched, but all the windows were empty sockets whose slimy tears were rotting vines. Inside, the work of art, destroyed, became confused with the work of nature, and across vast stretches of the kitchen the eye ran to the open heavens through the breach of the upper floors and the roof, fallen like fallen angels. Everything that was not green with moss was still black from the smoke of so many decades ago.

Poking about in the rubble, I found at times scraps of parchment that had drifted down from the scriptorium and the library and had survived like treasures buried in the earth; I began to collect them, as if I were going to piece together the torn pages of a book. Then I noticed that in one of the towers there rose, tottering but still intact, a circular staircase to the scriptorium, and from there, by climbing a sloping bit of the ruin, I could reach the level of the library: which, however, was only a sort of gallery next to the outside walls, looking down into the void at every point.

Along one stretch of wall I found a bookcase, still miraculously erect, having come through the fire I cannot say how; it was rotted by water and consumed by termites. In it there were still a few pages. Other remnants I found by rummaging in the ruins below. Mine was a poor harvest, but I spent a whole day reaping it, as if from those disiecta membra of the library a message might reach me. Some fragments of parchment had faded, others permitted the glimpse of an image’s shadow, or the ghost of one or more words. At times I found pages where whole sentences were legible; more often, intact bindings, protected by what had once been metal studs…. Ghosts of books, apparently intact on the outside but consumed within; yet sometimes a half page had been saved, an incipit was discernible, a title.

I collected every relic I could find, filling two traveling sacks with them, abandoning things useful to me in order to save that miserable hoard.

Along the return journey and afterward at Melk, I spent many, many hours trying to decipher those remains. Often from a word or a surviving image I could recognize what the work had been. When I found, in time, other copies of those books, I studied them with love, as if destiny had left me this bequest, as if having identified the destroyed copy were a clear sign from heaven that said to me: Tolle et lege. At the end of my patient reconstruction, I had before me a kind of lesser library, a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books.

***

The more I reread this list the more I am convinced it is the result of chance and contains no message. But these incomplete pages have accompanied me through all the life that has been left me to live since then; I have often consulted them like an oracle, and I have almost had the impression that what I have written on these pages, which you will now read, unknown reader, is only a cento, a figured hymn, an immense acrostic that says and repeats nothing but what those fragments have suggested to me, nor do I know whether thus far I have been speaking of them or they have spoken through my mouth. But whichever of the two possibilities may be correct, the more I repeat to myself the story that has emerged from them, the less I manage to understand whether in it there is a design that goes beyond the natural sequence of the events and the times that connect them. And it is a hard thing for this old monk, on the threshold of death, not to know whether the letter he has written contains some hidden meaning, or more than one, or many, or none at all.

But this inability of mine to see is perhaps the effect of the shadow that the great darkness, as it approaches, is casting on the aged world.

Est ubi gloria nunc Babyloniae? Where are the snows of yesteryear? The earth is dancing the dance of Macabre; at times it seems to me that the Danube is crowded with ships loaded with fools going toward a dark place.

All I can do now is be silent. O quam salubre, quam iucundum et suave est sedere in solitudine et tacere et loqui cum Deo! Soon I shall be joined with my beginning, and I no longer believe that it is the God of glory of whom the abbots of my order spoke to me, or of joy, as the Minorites believed in those days, perhaps not even of piety. Gott ist ein lauter Nichts, ihn rührt kein Nun noch Hier…. I shall soon enter this broad desert, perfectly level and boundless, where the truly pious heart succumbs in bliss. I shall sink into the divine shadow, in a dumb silence and an ineffable union, and in this sinking all equality and all inequality shall be lost, and in that abyss my spirit will lose itself, and will not know the equal or the unequal, or anything else: and all differences will be forgotten. I shall be in the simple foundation, in the silent desert where diversity is never seen, in the privacy where no one finds himself in his proper place. I shall fall into the silent and uninhabited divinity where there is no work and no image.

***

It is cold in the scriptorium, my thumb aches. I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I no longer know what it is about: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.