“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 t
he 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 Bat
tle 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.”
The name of the rose Page 97
