“But I don’t understand,” Dürer stammered. “If Master Spalatin desires to see me, there’s no call for chicanery. We have an excellent relationship. I demand to know the reason for this!”
The door opened. Agnes entered with a bag of husbandly necessities.
Dürer opened his mouth to cry alarm. As he did, he felt the sharp tip of a dagger pressing into the small of his back.
“Let me take that from you, Frau Dürerin,” Theobald said pleasantly. “And may I say what a pleasure it’s been to make your acquaintance. We’ll take good care of his honor here, and hurry him back to you.”
“Don’t on my account,” Agnes said, turning to go. “And if it’s another portrait that’s wanted, I’ll thank you to make sure he’s paid up front, in ready money. And for the two what’s owed.”
“Be assured,” Theobald said gallantly, “I’ll see to it, personal, like.”
• • •
There was little conversation on the three-day ride to Wittenberg.
On arrival, Dürer was taken immediately to Frederick’s reception room. There he found waiting the Elector and Secretary Spalatin. Their expressions conveyed neither welcome nor warmth.
“Master Dürer,” Frederick said in a sepulchral tone. “How good of you to come.”
“My lord. With respect, I protest most vehemently. Why have I been abducted in this manner? If you desired my presence, I would gladly have—”
Frederick held up a silencing hand.
“Master Dürer, are you aware of what has befallen my nephew Dismas?”
Dürer stared. “He went home. To Murrim or whatever he calls it. In the cantons. Why? Is something . . . amiss?”
Frederick regarded Dürer stonily.
“It is well you seem unawares, Master Dürer. If I thought you were awares, I should be displeased. Hard displeased.”
Dürer looked from Frederick to Spalatin.
“What’s happened? Is Dismas unwell?”
“He was hung from hooks in the dungeon of Mainz,” Spalatin said. “For near on a week. I leave to you to construe if that constitutes unwell.”
Dürer felt his chest constricting.
“Be assured, Master Dürer,” Frederick said, his voice rising, “if I am not satisfied by the answers you give, you shall experience my dungeon.”
The blood drained from Dürer’s face.
When their interview concluded, Frederick rose from his chair on two canes.
“We depart for Würzburg tomorrow. You shall remain here, Master Dürer. It is not for me to dictate the prayers of another man. But I urge you to pray for my success there. Should I return without my nephew, then your prayers must need be most fervent, and for your own behalf. I bid you good night.”
16
Penance
The Diet of Würzburg took place in the great hall of the Bishop’s palace.
By prearrangement, the two doors at either end of the hall opened. Albrecht and Frederick entered and walked toward each other, Frederick on two canes, Albrecht with a sprightly, officious step. Frederick inclined with difficulty to kiss Albrecht’s ring. Surprised by the gesture, Albrecht intercepted the Elector as he bowed and embraced him. An unwitting observer would have thought it a meeting of two old and cherished friends. They sat in facing chairs. Albrecht spoke first.
“How is our dear brother?”
“Old and fat. Scarlet becomes my dear brother. I regret I was unable to attend your installation. I hear it was a glorious occasion. As you see, my health is not robust. I am grateful to be able to extend personally my most cordial congratulations.”
“We thank you most humbly. To be sure, it is humbling.”
“I have no doubt you will discharge your office with the humility for which you are known. Now, to the substance of our meeting. I ask that you produce my errant nephew, that I may be satisfied that he has survived his ordeal. For without him, we can have no purpose here.”
“Errant?” Albrecht clucked. “ ‘Errant’ is inadequate to describe his wickedness.”
“Let us not quibble over words. Produce him.”
Albrecht said nothing. Spalatin thought, Dismas is dead. But then Albrecht raised a finger. A monsignor opened a door. Moments later Dismas entered, shuffling, supported on each arm by a Landsknecht.
His ears were mutilated where the hooks had torn out. His bandaged hands dangled limply before him. He seemed only dimly aware. He looked about the large room. When his eyes located Frederick and Spalatin, he smiled wanly and collapsed, supported by the two Landsknechte.
Frederick’s tone was glacial. “Is this the justice of Mainz?”
“We burn blasphemers. So as you see, the justice of Mainz has been mild.”
All cordiality gone, Elector and Cardinal glared at each other, hatred radiating off them in nearly visible waves. Looking on, Spalatin thought: If they were younger, they’d be at each other’s throats, swords drawn. The meeting was over, surely. Albrecht had only insisted on the meeting in order to have the satisfaction of seeing Frederick’s heart crack.
It was Frederick who broke the silence.
“What are your terms?”
“Luther for Dismas.”
“No.”
“Then we see nothing further to discuss.” Albrecht gestured to Dismas’s guards to take him away.
“Master Spalatin,” Frederick said in a commanding voice.
“My lord?”
“Send word to Wittenberg. Commence distribution of the pamphlets. Then print another thousand and distribute them. Let all the world know what corruption has befallen the See of Mainz. Let all the world know that the Cardinal of Mainz sells his vote, along with his soul.”
Frederick now rounded on Albrecht directly.
“You know me, Albrecht. I will do this. And neither you, nor Rome, will ever lay hand on Luther. Your name will echo in infamy down the ages. And when the next Dante writes his Inferno, there you shall be with the other simoniacs who sell absolution and heavenly favor for gold and silver. There you shall be, buried upside down in your own hole the size of a baptismal font, your wretched feet protruding to be licked by eternal flames. Think hard on that, brother. And consider—hard—if this man’s death is worth all that to you.”
Spalatin walked purposefully to the door. He’d reached it when Albrecht called out, “Wait.”
The Diet of Würzburg did not end, but continued for some hours, tempers flaring, cooling, flaring anew, cooling again. Both men pressed every advantage. Spalatin could barely believe what he heard. What—after all—did Albrecht want? Frederick’s relics.
Frederick consented to part with some of his rarest pieces: three thorns from the Crown of Thorns; the loincloth of St. John the Baptist; and dearest of all, the Holy Prepuce, one of the twelve of its kind averred to be the circumcised foreskin of the infant Jesus. Handing that over to Albrecht was hard sacrifice. Then when all seemed done and done, Albrecht said, “One more thing.”
“No,” Frederick said. “Enough.”
“Dismas must make his confession.”
Frederick and Spalatin looked at each other.
“You want him to confess?” Frederick said.
“He has sinned. Grievously. He must be shriven. It is for his own good.”
“Look at him. Has he not done penance enough? Your concern for his immortal soul is touching. Rest assured I will see he is attended by a confessor. If he lives.”
“We prefer to hear his confession here and now.”
“For pity’s sake, Albrecht.”
“What if he should perish on the road to Wittenberg? Do you want him to go to judgment with the odious sin of blasphemy on his soul?”
Frederick sighed and gave a curt nod.
Albrecht motioned the two Landsknechte. They dragged Dismas over to him. He’d gone unconscious again. One of the Landsknechte slapped him sharply on the face to wake him. Spalatin saw Frederick’s knuckles whiten around his cane handles.
Albrecht blessed Dis
mas with a sign of the cross.
“Do you wish to make confession?”
Dismas managed a nod.
“Do you confess that you committed sacrilege by contriving a shroud purporting to be that of our Blessed Savior?”
Dismas nodded.
“And are you sorry for your sin?”
Again Dismas nodded.
“We will grant you absolution for your sin. On condition that you undertake penance. Do you agree to do such penance as we give you?”
Dismas gave another nod, head sagging.
Albrecht looked at Frederick. A smirk.
“Your penance is to translate from Chambéry to Mainz the true burial shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
17
Dismissal
There was no rejoicing or triumph on the way back to Wittenberg, only numb relief at Dismas’s rescue. Frederick was in a black mood over Albrecht’s trickery. He retired to his chambers and left them only to prowl his plundered relic galleries in the small hours of the night.
Spalatin devoted his hours to searching for a canonical loophole that might nullify the penance Albrecht had meted out to Dismas. He consulted with a number of divines. Naturally, he turned first to Wittenberg’s own resident theologian, Friar Luther.
Luther ruled that Albrecht’s penance was invalid, on the grounds that a penance mandating a crime, in this case, stealing the Shroud of Chambéry, was eo ipso, contra lex naturalis. That is to say, in itself an act contrary to natural law and therefore, canonically speaking, without basis or authority.
Tempted as Spalatin and Frederick were to accept this ruling, they thought it best to get other opinions. Luther’s authority with respect to canon law was by this point somewhat shaky. Luther might still be a monk of the Roman Catholic Church, but he was a monk who almost daily denounced the Pope as “Antichrist” and Rome as “Babylon.” His most recent pamphlets had gone so far as to nullify several of the holy sacraments themselves, on the grounds that they were nowhere specified in the New Testament. Luther’s new doctrine desacralized confirmation, marriage, priestly ordination, and extreme unction. Even Erasmus of Rotterdam, himself sympathetic to reform, was appalled. Luther upheld the validity of baptism, Holy Communion, and an attenuated form of penance, while stoutly insisting that salvation came from faith alone, not priests. And certainly not from popes. Rumors were that Luther was revising the Ten Commandments themselves. Where would it end? Friar Martin was upending a millennium and a half of church doctrine. All of which made Frederick and Spalatin dubious as to the validity of his ruling as to Dismas’s penance.
Spalatin consulted other church doctors, among them Melanchthon and even the great Erasmus. (For obvious reasons, he did not identify Dismas or reveal that the penance had specified the Shroud of Chambéry.) These grandees of the Roman Church ruled that, unusual as such a penance might be, it was valid on the grounds that relic translation was not in itself a crime. Church doctrine, after all, held that a relic could not be translated unless the saint—or member of the Holy Family—consented to it. The test of the penance’s validity lay in whether the translation was effected. If Spalatin’s unnamed penitent succeeded, this must be construed as divine approval of the penance and translation. This was not the ruling Frederick and Spalatin had hoped for. Spalatin conveyed the bitter news to Dismas.
His recovery proceeded. He was attended by Frederick’s own surgeon, a chatty little Italian who referred to his wounds as his “stigmata.” It was a jocose, if impious, reference to the five bleeding wounds miraculously received by St. Francis of Assisi, symbolic of Christ’s. Dismas was recovered enough to be mildly amused by the little doctor’s levity. His chief source of amusement on his sickbed derived from fantasizing exotic torments for Dürer.
There was little enough cheer in contemplating what lay ahead of him: a surely doomed journey of six hundred miles to steal the most closely guarded relic in Christendom. No joy there.
Spalatin tried to lift his spirits by telling him that one of the theologians with whom he’d consulted was certain that if Dismas was killed in the course of performing his penance, he would be spared the fires of Hell and that his sentence in Purgatory would not exceed seven centuries.
Dismas’s misery was made more acute when Spalatin informed him that he was to be accompanied on his mission by three of Albrecht’s Landsknechte, to ensure that Dismas did not make a run for the cantons. Albrecht insisted. The Confederation had declared itself neutral territory only a few years earlier, in 1515. If Dismas crossed over, he would be beyond the pale of Albrecht’s authority, or anyone’s.
Dismas guessed that the Landsknechte had orders to kill him even if he did not try to escape. But so dismal were all his prospects that he did not care. He was a dead man either way. The best he could hope for was a quick death while doing his penance. Time in Purgatory was said to pass quickly enough. Seven hundred years wasn’t so bad, really. Maybe he could purchase an indulgence along the way to Chambéry.
Dürer, meanwhile, languished in another part of the castle, under house arrest, biding his time with mounting anxiety. Word was conveyed to Frau Dürerin that her husband was in good health, indeed prospering, having been commissioned by the Emperor to paint a great altarpiece. Alas this would prolong his return to Nuremberg, for some time yet.
• • •
A month passed. The talkative little Italian surgeon pronounced Dismas’s wounds healed. The scars of the stigmata remained, a permanent disfigurement. His hands and feet were holed through. His ears, torn in two, now had a tendency to flap when he moved briskly, imparting an elfin aspect. Dismas concealed them by growing his hair long. He found himself praying to St. Francis of Assisi, his fellow stigmata-bearer, while acutely conscious of the difference between St. Francis’s wounds and his own deserved ones. Dismas had no illusions of innocence. He had done something wicked. He had earned his wounds. He was resigned to whatever lay ahead.
But he wanted to meet it head-on, and so set about preparing himself physically for the ordeal. He put in hours in the castle courtyard with Frederick’s fencing masters and armorers, polishing old skills and learning new ones. He had put aside weaponry after Cerignola, vowing never again to take up arms, except to protect himself.
• • •
Finally one day in early March, the summons came. Dismas made his way to Frederick’s reception hall. Waiting for him were Frederick, Spalatin, and Dürer, who for once in his life looked sheepish. Dismas bowed to Frederick, nodded to Spalatin, and ignored Dürer.
“Nephew. You look much improved.”
“I owe my uncle everything.”
Frederick took in a deep breath, swelling the bellows of his chest.
“As you are aware, Master Spalatin has conferred with numerous authorities on the matter of the penance. Were it for myself to pronounce, I should dismiss it. But it is not. And this, Dismas, I regret. To the innermost chamber of my soul, I regret it.”
It pained Dismas to see Frederick in such distress.
“Uncle. I understand.”
Frederick nodded at Spalatin. Spalatin spoke.
“The Duke of Savoy displays the Shroud in Chambéry this fourth day of May, in two months’ time.”
Dismas calculated. Ten miles a day.
“The Cardinal requires that you be accompanied by three of his men. For our part, we have insisted to the Cardinal that they conduct themselves as men under your command. You are their captain. Their orders are to assist you in the translation. I am aware of your disinclination toward Landsknechte. Bear in mind that above all else, the Cardinal desires the success of your mission. It seems therefore reasonable to suppose they will assist you.”
Frederick gave Dürer a withering sidelong look. “It is my order that you will also be accompanied by Master Dürer. You have your penance to discharge. Master Dürer has his.”
“With respect, Uncle, Master Dürer can mine salt in Silesia for his penance. I decline his company.”
“I am
not sending him for the purpose of disconcerting you. He disposes of skills that could prove useful in such an undertaking as this.”
“I am well acquainted with the skills of Master Dürer. I want no part of them.”
“I do this for your benefit, Dismas.”
Dürer spoke.
“With respect, your worship, Dismas surely has enough to concern him without having to—”
“Master Dürer. Here is your choice. You will accompany Dismas to Chambéry, subject to his command and rendering him every assistance. Or you will remain here. You are a painter. We can always use painters. Can we not, Master Spalatin?”
“Yes, your grace. The superintendent informs me that the cellar walls are in need of lime-washing.”
“Which cellar walls?”
“All, your grace.”
“How long do you reckon it would take one painter to accomplish this task?”
“A long time, I should think. And once it were finished, it would be necessary to begin again, at the beginning.”
“Well, Master Dürer. How do you choose?”
Dürer said nothing.
“Then it’s arranged. Georg, Master Dürer, leave us.”
When the others had gone, Frederick said to Dismas, “Come, let me give you my blessing.” He pressed something into Dismas’s hand.
Dismas looked. It was a fragment of bone, edged in gold and attached to a gold chain. Dismas recognized it and smiled.
“The knuckle of Saint Christopher. Protector of travelers.”
“I paid you twelve gulden for that. I’m not sure you deserve such an expensive gift.”
“No. Sure, I don’t.”
“For that money, it had better be genuine, or you’ll . . .” The words caught in his throat. The old man was fighting tears. “. . . have even more to answer for. But if it is genuine, it will keep you safe. God go with you, Dismas.”
The Relic Master Page 11
