by Umberto Eco
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.”
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’ bare 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 woeful 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 of his followers, 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 since the time of Saint Sylvester all the prelates of the church had been prevaricators and seducers except Peter of Morrone, that tithes should be paid to your sect alone, who are the only apostles and paupers of Christ, that you went through villages and seduced people crying ‘Penitenziagite,’ that you passed yourselves off as penitents and then allowed yourselves every license, every lustfulness, 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, 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. . . .”
