Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

  Remove this.

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  7. Letter from Father Pierre LeMaitre, SJ, dated Toulouse, 5 January 1581, addressed to the Superior General of the General Curia in Rome.

  This day I did receive a visit from one Giordano Bruno, late of Geneva. He told me that he had not taken any part in the heresies rife in that city, but that he now wished to be received back into the Church. He hinted to me that he had once been a member of the Dominican Order, but provided no information to support this claim, and nothing in his dress, deportment or language would suggest it might be true.

  This Bruno seemed to me a strange and elusive character. He is a theologian and philosopher, which subjects he teaches here at the university, yet his speech was filled with references to mathematics and the fixed stars, and he said at one point that he was an astronomer, at another that he was an astrologer, and at a third that he had devised an original system of memory. I was left with the impression that he himself did not know what he might be, except mayhap a charlatan. And yet he comes with letters from colleagues here at the university and from the Marchese de Vico of Naples who all extol his learning. Still, I admit I did not trust the man.

  When in our conversation I did confront him with these contradictions he did wave them away with a wild gesture of the hand, as if they were no more than an irritant, and said simply that that was what he was.

  Despite such doubts, I would of course have welcomed him back to the salvation of Mother Church were he truly repentant of his sins. Yet at this point he spoke of things that troubled me greatly, which is why I write to you today. I seek your guidance as to whether the case of this Giordano Bruno should be referred to the Office of the Holy Inquisition. For he told me that he had had congress with demons.

  He did not use these words, of course, for he was very circumspect in his speech. He spoke of meeting others that were like men yet not. He spoke of it as though it were an embassy. He said they had much learning to impart about the motion of the planets and stars and the nature of life upon other worlds. He spoke quietly and seriously, as one might speak of meeting an admired teacher for the first time, and I took him to be referring in some fanciful way to visitors from the Holy Roman Empire, where I hear there are many men skilled in astronomy. But as he continued, talking of worlds that knew not our Lord Jesus Christ, and vessels that moved in the air, and so much more, then did I fear that some dreadful heresy was being unfolded to me. And at last I did become frightened and angry, and I raised my voice and told him that his sins were too great ever to expect the mercy of the Church and that he must leave God’s house right away.

  At this he seemed not surprised or upset, but rose gently and straightway went to the door. But there he paused, and turning to me said, ‘Tell your people, tell Rome, that I . . .’ Then he stopped, and his last words as he left were not, I think, meant for my ears, for he said, ‘No, no use, I must find a different sponsor now.’ And at that he left.

  Marginal notation in another hand:

  Uncharacteristic. A very risky strategy. Were there other attempts to get a message to us?

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  7a. Note attached to the letter from Fr. LeMaitre and dated 27 March 1581.

  By order of the General Curia, Father Pierre LeMaitre is hereby recalled to Rome.

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  8. Note found in the apartment of Giordano Bruno after he left Paris. The note is undated. Extensive charring indicates an attempt was made to burn it.

  I have been visited four times since we first established contact five years ago, but visits seem to be difficult for them. They are weighed down, move slowly and heavily, though in their bodies they seem so light. They talk of ‘gravity’, but I do not understand the word. They seem eager to meet, happy to teach me much, and they insist that they learn from me. But at the same time they are reluctant, they suggest that it is difficult, damaging, perhaps even dangerous. Now they suggest that I should visit them, and I am afraid. If it is dangerous for them here, how much more dangerous would it be for me in their realm? And yet, how much more might I learn there?

  All of the above has been heavily scratched out, but remains legible. The words below seem to have been added later, and were clearly written in haste.

  No point, who could I tell? I must go!

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  9. Testimony of Marie Clement, servant, given in the presence of King Henri III and Pierre de Gondi, Bishop of Paris. Bishop Pierre de Gondi made this record, and no one else was present. At the foot of the document are affixed the Royal Seal of France and the seal of the Bishop of Paris; there is an X identified as the mark of Marie Clement. The document is dated 27 March 1583.

  Your Most Christian Majesty, I aver that my name is Marie Clement, I am seventeen years of age and I work as a servant here in the Palace.

  On Monday of last week, I am sorry your Grace, I do not know the date. But it was Monday, your Majesty, because on Monday I sweep the corridors of the servants’ quarters. This would have been a little before midday. I was alone, all the other servants were about their duties of course. But for myself, there was nobody in the corridor, and if it had not been my day to sweep there would have been nobody at all.

  Yes, your Majesty, that was when the man appeared. He fell, like someone who has missed his step. No, your Grace, there is no step in that corridor, nor anything else he might have stumbled over. No, your Grace, I do not know where he came from. There was no door near him, nor any open window. No, your Majesty, no hole had formed in the walls or ceiling. Indeed, I know that workmen have examined the corridor since Monday and have found no way that he might have entered.

  Yes, your Majesty, I did recognise him. I do not know his name, but he is the one we call the Memory Man.

  The first thing I did was go to him and ask if he needed any help. No, your Grace, he wasn’t far from me, a half a dozen paces maybe, no more. He was sitting against the wall of the corridor and seemed a little dazed. When he saw me, he said ‘What the devil,’ pardon your Grace, ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ I told him I was sweeping, and I showed him the broom that I was still holding, but he waved his hand as if it was of no importance.

  Then he said, ‘Help me up, will you.’ I bent down to give him my hand, which he clasped, but he still seemed to have great difficulty getting to his feet. ‘You are injured, sir,’ I said. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no damage done. But they were right, the body is confoundedly heavy.’

  I beg your pardon, your Majesty, but the Memory Man is not large. He is somewhat below average height and very thin, not heavy at all, but that is what he said. And when, at last, he was able to stand up, he bent over with his hands on his knees breathing very hard, as if he had done something very strenuous. Then he straightened up and said, ‘Let me lean on you for a while.’ He put an arm around my shoulder, and I thought he might drag me to the ground so much did he sag. We walked very slowly to the end of the corridor. There we found a chair, and he sat down. I asked if he needed anything further, and he said, ‘No, I’ll be fine in a moment,’ and he sent me back about my business.

  No, your Majesty, I didn’t see him again. When I had finished my work and got back to that end of the corridor he had gone. No, your Grace, I did not ask who ‘they’ were, nor where he had come from. It was not my place to do so. He said nothing beyond what I have told you today.

  Yes, sirs, that is a true account of what I remember.

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  10. Extract from a letter sent from Michel de Castelnau, the French Ambassador at the Court of St James, to King Henri III of France. The letter is dated 11 June 1583. This letter, which may be a copy since it is certainly not in de Castelnau’s hand, appears to have been read in the Vatican as early as August 1583.

  As for the man Bruno, he arrived in April with your Majesty’s letter of recommendation, and I have, as directed, found him suitable accommodation. I find him easy to admire, for he has very great learning and discourses readily on all manner of subjects, yet he is hard to like. His m
anner is abrupt and abrasive, and I fear this may not go down well with the English, who are very jealous of their proper standing and elaborate courtesies. Nevertheless, he has quickly made the acquaintance of several people in good standing on the edges of the court, including the poet Sydney and the mathematician Digges, who is himself in the circle of the notorious Doctor Dee who has the ear of the Queen. I have also learned but lately that philosophers at Oxford University have invited him to address them. I do not yet know why the man is in England, but it is clear that he may well be of service to us . . .

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  11. Extract from a memorandum supposedly written by Francis Walsingham. The memorandum is undated, is not in his hand, and does not follow certain practices usual in Walsingham’s private writings. It is assumed, therefore, that this is a forgery, although it is unclear why or when it was created. The document was certainly held in the Vatican no later than 1620.

  . . . this Bruno is most like a spy. For he resides at the French embassy, though he is no ambassador, and it would seem at the express command of King Henry. Nor is he French, but would seem to be a Neapolitan. It is rumoured that he was once a monk or priest, the stories do not agree, yet he pretends now to be no Catholic, and indeed seems to attract the ire of many of that persuasion. He presents himself as a philosopher, and moves easily in that company, though it is said that he has little English, his French is barbaric and even his Latin is poor. Tis certain, though, that he has a prodigious memory, an accomplishment most meet in the profession of spy. We should, therefore, keep careful watch on this Bruno, but bear in mind that we may be able to use his talents for our own purposes.

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  12. Anonymous denunciation, one of many similar removed from the Office of the Holy Inquisition, 18 February 1600.

  There is here one Giordano Bruno that I did know in Italy. He speaks publicly of the most foul heresies, that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, that there are infinite numbers of stars and that they in turn have planets like the Earth around them, and that there may be people on these planets without the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. In private, he has congress with demons, and has said that they have taken him up into their realm. I know this for I have witnessed it, both in Italy and again here in London.

  Marginal notation in another hand:

  This one looks like the same handwriting as the spy who accompanied him to Venice.

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  13. Biographical fragment found among the papers of Francis Godwin, Bishop of Hereford, after his death in April 1633. The fragment was seemingly intended to accompany his fantasy, The Man in the Moone (published posthumously, 1638), but was withheld, apparently on the instructions of his son. It is unclear how this document found its way to the Vatican.

  In 1583, when I took my master’s at Oxford, a learned man from Italy named Giordano Bruno came to address us. He spoke many times, and I did try to attend as many as I was able. He spoke in a moderate Latin, interspersed with words from many other languages, some of which I suspect were of his own devising, but what he spoke about was so interesting that it was worth making the effort to follow. He tried, in several lectures, to teach us the art of building Memory Palaces, though I have never been successful in that endeavour. But once or twice he spoke of the heavens. He spoke of the work of Doctor Copernicus, which I had never heard explained so clearly. Then he went beyond Copernicus, telling us that as the planets circled our sun, so the stars were also suns with planets circling them. I have heard that Thomas Digges has said something similar before, yet it felt as if Master Bruno were vouchsafing some great revelation. He spoke as if with private knowledge.

  I was, at this time, already thinking of my voyage to the Moon, and so I did contrive to meet privily with Master Bruno. I took with me some fine Rhenish, which I had heard he did enjoy, and for some hour or more we did sit in his chambers and he did regale me with more mathematics about planets and orbits than my poor mind could hold. But as the hour grew late I did venture to mention my fantasy of more perfect beings on the Moon, and he sat quiet for some time regarding me strangely. Then, abruptly, he waved his hand and said, ‘Not more perfect, no. More advanced, more learned, and that,’ he paused here and sipped his wine. I had not known him so quiet for so long, for he had seemed a man full of words, but now he put down his wine and leaned forward as if ready to impart a great secret. ‘And that,’ he continued, ‘mayhap tends to perfection. Yes, mayhap it does.’

  He looked searchingly at me, as if weighing me on some unknowable scale. I made to say something, I know not what, but he cut me off sharply. ‘I have met them, and they are not perfect. But they have seen so much, have learned so much, have so much that they might teach us did we but know how.’ He looked puzzled, as if he had not expected to hear himself say that. Then he went on again rapidly, permitting no interruption. ‘No, no I am not mad, nor do I consort with devils as I know some rumours would have it. Many years ago I calculated that there must be other beings in the universe, though I had no knowledge of how we might contact them. Then, one night, as I watched the stars near my monastery in Naples, I saw something obscure the stars in a way that seemed to be no cloud. I had no notion what this might be, and in moments it had gone. I saw nothing further for maybe a year, then, again, a shape which I recalled matched exactly what I had seen the year before. Now I began to speculate that perhaps those other beings had found a way to come to us. For such a long time I saw nothing more. I took my speculations to the Vatican, where a cardinal seemed interested and gave me some backing, but that came to nothing and besides he is dead now. I began to think of ways that I might attract them. On clear nights I set fires in open spaces where no one might see. I arranged them in geometric shapes, line and triangle and square, or in mathematical progressions, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen. I left the church so I might travel and learn as much of the heavens as was known, in case others had seen these things, And one night, near Venice it was . . .’

  Again he lapsed into silence, and though he had not moved I do not think he saw me still. ‘They look somewhat like us,’ he said, slowly now, ‘but they are notably taller and thinner, and their flesh is so pale that in darkness it seems to glow. But it is only as you get to know them that you understand how different they are. They bend in ways that we do not, they move in ways that seem more an undulation than a walk. When first you meet them it seems as if you are in conversation with a normal man, it is only later that they become more and more unsettling. They spoke to me. I am not sure how they spoke, it was not Latin or Italian, the two languages that in those days I knew, yet I understood perfectly what they were saying. And it seemed that they understood me.

  ‘They came to me four times. That first time near Venice, twice in Geneva and again in Toulouse. But I could see that it was tiring for them, as if they bore an extra weight upon this Earth. I was persuaded, therefore, in Paris to let them take me up into their ship. They call it a ship, though it is like no ship you or I have ever seen. It is more like a building, or indeed more like a city, with squares and avenues and such space that in places it is hard to realise you are enclosed. And I was indeed lighter, such that it seemed I had to learn to walk all over again. Though there were parts of the ship that they showed me where I might fly, although they said I was not actually flying, but rather between the worlds there is no weight except that which they create artificially. I have been several times to their ship since then, and it gets easier to be there and harder to return to our world.

  ‘They have shown me wonders, though there is much I do not understand, and much that feels almost but not quite within my grasp. And they have spent as long, or longer, questioning me about this world. I sometimes think that all my travels have been more concerned with finding new information to tell them than it has been the result of my own restlessness.’ He paused then, seeming very sad now. ‘All that I have seen, all that I have learned, will die with me. I cannot put it into a book that censors will allow me to
print, and there are censors everywhere. I have heard, of one Brahe in Denmark, or perhaps Rudolph in Prague. Perhaps I should go there, tell them. But would they want to know?’

  At that he fell into a sullen silence, and I left soon after, leaving the remainder of the Rhenish with him. I was not sure what to make of all he had told me, for we had drunk much. But in time I would base my inhabitants of the Moon upon his description, and short, abrupt, restless Domingo is, of course, a reference to Bruno. And I remembered, too, that there was no weight between the worlds, though that seemed perhaps the most fanciful of all the things he told me.

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  14. Extract from a letter from Michel de Castelnau to King Henri III dated October 1585.

  I beg to inform your Majesty that the mob has attacked our Embassy in London. Since neither Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth nor her creature Walsingham show any willingness to restrain this action or defend our persons, I have no alternative but to return temporarily to France. I will present your Majesty with a full account of the circumstances and the effect of this attack upon my arrival in Paris.

  I have, incidentally, persuaded Giordano Bruno to return with me. Since he seems to have incurred the enmity of many different forces in England, I do not feel his safety could be guaranteed were he to remain.

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  15. Letter from Girolamo Besler to Giordano Bruno, dated 19 November 1591. The letter was found on Bruno’s person when he was arrested in Venice, 22 May 1592.

  My friend, permit me to make one last desperate attempt to persuade you to change your mind. I can see nothing awaiting you in Venice but imprisonment and death. You have said that the Inquisition is no longer as diligent in your pursuit as once it was. Yet there is no evidence to support such a claim, and I am not even sure that you believe it yourself. The authorities in Venice are no longer so independent as once they were, and should you return to that city they will surely arrest you and hand you over to Rome.