Baudolino

by Umberto Eco

  "When Bishop Otto told me what a studium is, he said that these communities of masters and students operate independently: the students come from all over the world and it doesn't matter who their sovereign is, and they pay their teachers, who are therefore dependent entirely on their pupils. This is how things work with the masters of law in Bologna, and this is how it is also in Paris, where in earlier times the masters taught in the cathedral schools and hence were dependent on the bishop, until one fine day they went off to teach on the Mountain of Saint Geneviève, and they attempt to discover the truth without listening either to the bishop or to the king."

  "If I were their king I'd show them a thing or two. But even if this were the case?"

  "It would be the case if you made a law by which you acknowledge that the masters of Bologna are truly independent of every other power, whether yours or the pope's or any other sovereign's, and they are in the service only of the Law. Once they are invested with this dignity, unique in the world, they will affirm that—in accord with true reason, natural enlightenment, and tradition—the only law is the Roman and the only person representing it is the holy Roman emperor—and that naturally, as Master Rainald has said so well— quod principi plaquit legis habet vigorem."

  "And why would they say that?"

  "Because, in exchange, you give them the right to say it, and that is no small thing. So you are content, they are content, and, as my father Gagliaudo used to say, you are both in an iron-clad barrel."

  "They wouldn't agree to anything like that," Rainald grumbled.

  "Yes, they would." Frederick's face brightened. "I tell you they will agree. Only, first, they have to make that declaration, and then I'll give them independence. Otherwise everyone will think that they did it to repay a gift from me."

  "If you ask me, even if you do turn the process around, if someone wants to say it was prearranged, they'll say so anyway," Baudolino remarked skeptically. "But I'd like to see anyone stand up and say the doctors of Bologna aren't worth a dried fig, when even the emperor has gone humbly to ask their opinion. At that point, what they have said is Gospel."

  And so it happened, that same year, at Roncaglia, where for the second time a great diet was held. For Baudolino it was above all a great spectacle. As Rahewin explained to him—so he wouldn't believe that everything he saw was simply a big circus with banners flapping on all sides, standards, colored tents, merchants, and mountebanks—Frederick, along one side of the Po, had a typical Roman camp reconstructed, to remind everyone that his dignity derived from Rome. In the center of the camp stood the imperial tent, like a temple, and it was encircled by the tents of feudal lords, vassals, and vavasours. On Frederick's side were the archbishop of Cologne, the bishop of Bamberg, Daniel of Prague, Conrad of Augusta, and many others. On the other side of the river, the cardinal legate of the Apostolic See, the patriarch of Aquileia, the archbishop of Milan, the bishops of Turin, Alba, Ivrea, Asti, Novara, Vercelli, Terdona, Pavia, Como, Lodi, Cremona, Piacenza, Reggio, Modena, Bologna, and others, more than can be remembered. Seated in this majestic and truly universal assembly, Frederick opened the discussion.

  In brief (Baudolino said, so as not to bore Niketas with the masterpieces of imperial, judicial, and ecclesiastical oratory), four doctors of Bologna, the most famous, pupils of the great Irnerius, were invited by the emperor to express an unchallengeable doctrinal opinion on his powers. And three of them, Bulgarus, Jacopus, and Hugo of Porta Ravegnana, expressed themselves as Frederick wished: namely, that the right of the emperor was based on Roman law. Only a certain Martinus was of a different opinion.

  "And Frederick had then to gouge out his eyes," Niketas commented.

  "Oh, not at all, Master Niketas," Baudolino replied, "You Romei gouge out the eyes of this man or that and you have no idea where the law stands any more, forgetting your great Justinian. Immediately afterwards, Frederick promulgated the Constitutio Habita, with which the autonomy of the Bologna studium was recognized, and if the studium was autonomous, then Martinus could say what he wanted and not even the emperor could touch a hair of his head. For if he had, then the doctors were no longer autonomous, and if they weren't autonomous then their opinion was worthless, and Frederick risked passing for a usurper."

  All right, Niketas thought, then Master Baudolino wants to suggest to me that he was the founder of the empire, and that if he simply uttered an ordinary sentence, such was his power that it became truth. Let's hear the rest.

  Meanwhile the Genoese had come in bearing a basket of fruit, because it was midday, and Niketas had to have refreshment. They said the sack was continuing, and it was best to remain in the house. Baudolino resumed his story.

  Frederick had decided that, if a boy still almost beardless produced such acute ideas, who could say what would happen if the boy were actually sent to study in Paris? He embraced Baudolino affectionately, urging him to become truly learned, since he himself, with his duties of government and his military operations, had never had time to cultivate his mind properly. The empress had taken her leave of him with a kiss on the forehead (we can only imagine Baudolino's ecstasy), saying to him (that prodigious woman, though she was a great lady and a queen, knew how to read and write): "Write to me, tell me about yourself, about what happens to you. Life at court is monotonous. Your letters will be a comfort to me."

  "I will write, I swear," Baudolino said, with an ardor that should have aroused the suspicions of those present. None of them became suspicious (who notices the excitement of a boy about to go to Paris?), except perhaps Beatrice. In fact, she looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time, and her very white face was covered with an immediate flush. But Baudolino, with a bow that obliged him to look at the ground, had already left the hall.

  6. Baudolino goes to Paris

  Baudolino arrived in Paris a bit late: in those schools, students entered before they were fourteen, and he was two years older. But he had already learned so many things from Otto that he allowed himself to miss some of the lessons in order, as will be seen, to do other things.

  He had set off with a companion, the son of a knight from Cologne, who preferred to devote himself to the liberal arts rather than to the army, not without causing his father some pain, but supported by his mother, who vaunted his precocious poetic gifts, whence Baudolino, if he had ever known the youth's name, soon forgot it. He called him the Poet, and so did all the others who met him later. Baudolino soon discovered that the Poet had never written a poem, but had only declared his wish to write some. Since he constantly recited the poems of others, in the end even his father became convinced that his son should follow the Muses and allowed him to leave, putting in his pocket barely enough to keep him alive, in the completely mistaken notion that the small amount necessary to live in Cologne would be more than enough for life in Paris.

  Immediately upon his arrival, Baudolino, who could hardly wait to obey the empress, wrote her some letters. In the beginning he believed he would allay his ardor by fulfilling that request, but he realized how painful it was to write without being able to tell her what he truly felt, inditing letters perfect and seemly, in which he described Paris, a city rich in beautiful churches, where one breathed fine air, the sky was vast and serene, except when it rained, but never more than once or twice a day, and for someone who came from virtually eternal fog, it was a place of eternal spring. There was a winding river with two islands in the middle, and the water was very good to drink, and just beyond the walls balmy spaces stretched away, such as the meadow next to the abbey of Saint Germain, where they spent beautiful afternoons playing ball.

  He told her of his troubles in the early days, when he had to find a room, to share with his companion, without letting the landlords cheat him. At a dear price they had found a fairly spacious room, with a table, two benches, shelves for books and a trunk.... There was a high bed with an ostrich-feather comforter, and a low bed on wheels with a goose-down cover, which in the daytime was concealed be
neath the bigger one. The letter did not say that, after a brief hesitation over the assignment of the beds, it was decided that every evening the two roommates would play chess for the more comfortable bed, because at court chess was considered an unseemly game.

  Another letter told how they awoke early because lessons began at seven and lasted until late afternoon. They fortified themselves with a good ration of bread and a bowl of wine, before going to listen to their masters/teachers in a kind of stable, where, seated on the sparse straw on the ground, they were colder than they would have been outside. Beatrice was moved and urged him not to be frugal with the wine, otherwise a youth feels listless the whole day, and to hire a servant, not only to carry the books, which are very heavy and to carry them oneself is unworthy of a person of rank, but also to buy the wood and light the fire in the room betimes, so that it would be good and warm in the evening. And for all these expenses she sent forty solidi of Susa, enough to buy an ox.

  The servant had not been hired and the wood had not been bought, because at night the two featherbeds were fine; the sum had been spent more wisely, inasmuch as the evenings were passed in taverns, which were splendidly heated and permitted some refreshment after a day of study, and some pinching of bottoms of the serving wenches. And further, in those places of merry repose, like the Ecu d'Argent, the Croix de Fer, Les Trois Chandeliers, between one mug and the next, they restored their vigor with pork or chicken pies, a pair of pigeons or a roast goose or, if they were poorer, with tripe or mutton. Baudolino helped the Poet, who was penniless, to live not by tripe alone. But the Poet was a costly friend, because the amount of wine he drank made that Susa ox grow thinner before their very eyes.

  Omitting these details, Baudolino went on to write of his masters and the fine things he was learning. Beatrice was very sensitive to these revelations, which whetted her own appetite for knowledge, and she read and reread the letters in which Baudolino told her about grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, and of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. But Baudolino felt more and more cowardly, because, writing to her, he remained silent about what most oppressed his heart and about all the other things he did, which cannot be told to a mother or to a sister, or to an empress or, still less, to the beloved woman.

  Mostly the students played ball, true, but they also brawled with the people of the Abbey of Saint Germain, or among students of different origin, Picards against Normans, for example, and they traded insults in Latin, so that anyone could understand you were offending him. These were all things frowned upon by the Great Provost, who sent his bowmen to arrest the most unruly. Obviously, at this point the students forgot their differences and all together fell to exchanging blows with the bowmen.

  No men in the world were more easily corrupted than the bowmen of the provost. So if a student was arrested, they all had to dig into their purses to persuade the bowmen to set him free. This made the pleasures of Paris even more costly.

  Second, a student who has no amorous affairs is derided by his fellows. Unfortunately, the most inaccessible thing for the students was women. There were very few female students to be seen, and there were legends still circulated about the beautiful Héloïse, who had cost her lover the cutting off of his pudenda, even if it was one thing to be a student, hence by definition ill-famed and yet tolerated, and another to be a professor, like the great and unhappy Abélard. Mercenary love was expensive, and so they had to rely on the occasional tavern wench or some common woman of the neighborhood, but in that quarter there were always more students than females.

  Unless they managed to assume an idle air and ribald look while strolling on the Ile de la Cité, and thus succeed in seducing ladies of higher station. Much desired were the wives of the butchers of La Grève, who, after an honored career in their trade, no longer slaughtered cattle but governed the meat market, behaving like gentlemen. With a husband born quartering oxen, who had achieved comfort late in life, the wives were alert to the fascination of the more handsome students. But these ladies wore sumptuous dresses decorated with fur, and silver and bejeweled belts, which made it difficult at first sight to distinguish them from grand prostitutes who, though the laws forbade it, usually dressed in the same fashion. This exposed the students to some unfortunate misunderstandings, for which they were all the more derided by their friends.

  If a student succeeded in winning a real lady, or indeed a virtuous maiden, sooner or later husbands and fathers would find out, and there would be a fight, sometimes with weapons; and someone died or was wounded, almost always the husband or father, and then there was more brawling with the bowmen of the provost. Baudolino hadn't killed anyone, and in general he also stayed well away from brawls, but with one husband (and butcher) he had had to deal. Ardent in love but cautious in matters of war, when he saw the husband enter the room, swinging one of those hooks used to hang slaughtered animals, Baudolino immediately tried to jump out the window. But, as he was judiciously calculating the distance before making the leap, he had had time to receive a slash on the cheek, thus decorating forever his face with a scar worthy of a man-at-arms.

  On the other hand, even winning working-class women was not an everyday occurrence and demanded long sieges (at the expense of lessons), and whole days spent observing from the window, which generated boredom. Then dreams of seduction were abandoned, and the youths threw water down on the passersby, or they used the women as targets, firing peas with a slingshot, or they even taunted teachers who went past below, and if these grew angry, the students would follow them, in a body, to their house, throwing stones at the windows because, after all, it was the students who paid them and thus had earned some rights.

  Baudolino, in fact, was telling Niketas what he had not told Beatrice, namely, that he was becoming one of those clerics who studied the liberal arts in Paris, or jurisprudence in Bologna, or medicine in Salerno, or sorcery in Toledo, but in no place learned good behavior. Niketas did not know whether to be shocked, amazed, or amused. In Byzantium there were only private schools for the sons of well-to-do families, where, from their earliest years, they learned grammar and read pious works and the masterpieces of classical culture; after the age of eleven they studied poetry and rhetoric, they learned to compose on the literary models of the ancients; and the rarer the terms they used, and the more complex their syntactical constructions, the more readily they were considered for a bright future in the imperial administration. But afterwards, either they became sages in a monastery or they studied things such as law or astronomy from private masters. Still, they studied seriously, whereas it seemed that in Paris the students did everything except study.

  Baudolino corrected him. "In Paris we worked very hard. For example, after the first years, we were already taking part in debates, and in debate you learn to posit objections and to move on to the determination, that is, to the final solution of a question. And you mustn't think that the lessons are the most important things for a student, or that the tavern is only a place where they waste time. The good thing about the studium is that you learn from your teachers, true, but even more from your fellows, especially those older than you, when they tell you what they have read, and you discover that the world must be full of wondrous things and to know them all—since a lifetime will not be enough for you to travel through the whole world—you can only read all the books."

  Baudolino had been able to read many books with Otto, but he hadn't realized that there could exist as many in the world as there were in Paris. They were not at everyone's disposal, but through good luck, or, rather, through good attendance at his lessons, he had come to know Abdul.

  "To explain the connection between Abdul and the libraries, I have to go back a little, Master Niketas. While I was following a lesson, always blowing on my fingers to warm them, and with my bottom freezing, because the straw didn't offer much protection against that floor, icy like all of Paris on those winter days, one morning I noticed a boy near me who, by the color of his face, seemed a Saracen
, except that he also had red hair, which you don't find among Moors. I don't know if he was following the lesson or pursuing his own thoughts, but he was staring into space. Every so often he would shiver and pull his clothing around him, then he would return to looking into the air, and at times he would scratch something on his tablet. I craned my neck, and I realized that half of what he wrote looked like those fly droppings that are the Arabs' alphabet, and for the rest he wrote in a language that seemed Latin but wasn't, and it even reminded me of the dialects of my land. Anyway, when the lesson was over, I struck up a conversation; he reacted politely, as if he had been wanting for some time to find a person to talk with; we made friends, we went walking along the river, and he told me his story."

  ***

  The boy's name was Abdul, a Moor's name, in fact, but he was born of a mother who came from Hibernia, and this explained the red hair, because all those who come from that remote island are like that, and according to report, they are bizarre, dreamers. His father was Provençal, of a family that had settled overseas after the conquest of Jerusalem, fifty some years before. As Abdul tried to explain, those Frankish nobles had adopted the customs of the peoples they had conquered. They wore turbans and indulged in other Turkeries, they spoke the language of their enemies, and were within an inch of following the precepts of the Koran. For which reason a half-Hibernian, with red hair, could be called Abdul and could have a face burned by the sun of Syria, where he was born. He thought in Arabic, and in Provençal he told the ancient sagas of the frozen seas of the north, which he had heard from his mother.

  Baudolino immediately asked him if he was in Paris to become a good Christian again and speak as one should, namely, in proper Latin. As to his reasons for coming to Paris, Abdul remained fairly reticent. He spoke of a thing that had happened to him, something fairly upsetting apparently, a kind of terrible ordeal to which he had been subjected while still a boy, so that his noble parents had decided to send him to Paris to save him from some unknown vendetta. Speaking of this, Abdul turned grim, blushing as much as a Moor can blush, his hands trembling, and Baudolino decided to change the subject.