Adriano Petta

Pure Heresy historical novel originally published in Italy in December 2005 under the title Eresia Pura by STAMPA ALTERNATIVA (ISBN – 88-7226-904-0)

outline & the 3 first chapters translated from the Italian by Donald Boris Hope

Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters

Outline………………….page 3 Chapter I ……………….page 11 Chapter II .………….… page 28 Chapter III …………….page 44

* * * Stampa Alternativa – Nuovi Equilibri Strada Tuscanese km 4.800 01100 Viterbo (VT) Italy Editorial director: Marcello Baraghini Commercial director: Angelo Leone [email protected] [email protected] tel. +39 0761.352277 – 0761.353485 fax +39 0761.352751

* * * Adriano Petta is a medievalist, collaborating with the expert in Catharist studies in Italy, Professor Giovanni Gonnet; and a student of the history of science. He has published two more historical novels, Roghi fatui (Stampa Alternativa, 2001) and Hypatia, scientist of Alexandria (english edition with preface by Margherita Hack by Lampi di stampa, September 2005) which, together with Pure heresy, form the trilogy developed from his studies on the conflict between Reason and Religion. He published also La cattedrale dei pagliacci (Robin, Rome, 2000, under the pseudonym James Adler), La Guerra dei fiori (Edis, Brescia, 1993), La libertà di Marusja (Gitti Europa, Milano, 1992).

([email protected] ) * * *

Back Cover of Pure Heresy

The heresy of the Cathars, the “Pure”, was the bane of the papacy at the dawn of the second millennium. Determined to became the greatest power in the western world, the catholic church decided with cold resolution to prevent the spread of learning – whether religious, philosophical or scientific – and to exterminate whoever might oppose its great project. In this historical novel, against the background of the tragedy of the Cathars and the genocide of Occitania at the turn of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries, there unfolds the struggle of one man for freedom of thought. The tragic story of Jordanus Nemorarius (the predecessor of Leonardo da Vinci), whose real identity was deliberately concealed even in some of the “official” history of science, is here reconstructed, by following its half-hidden traces in order to resolve their enigma. The gigantic fire in which, on 16th march 1244, the last martyrs of catharism were burned alive, did not succeed in burning all the “keys of knowledge”: and now it is at last possible to retrace a path that leads back to the very roots of western culture.

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PURE HERESY

historical novel by Adriano Petta, originally published in Italy in December 2005 under the title “Eresia pura” by STAMPA ALTERNATIVA – NUOVI EQUILIBRI; Viterbo/Italy. (ISN 88- 7226-904-0)

OUTLINE

It is the hot night of July 24th 1207. We are at Nemi, in one of the outbuildings around the castle (the summer residence of the Cistercian monks of the monastery of Sant’Anastasio alle Tre Fontane in Rome). Exhausted by the sultry heat and by fatigue, two lay brothers – whose job is to cultivate the land and to look after the castle the whole year round – are talking late into the night. Old Jerome hates and curses priests, monks, abbots, bishops and popes. Young Giordano is instead entirely absorbed in the study of mechanics and mathematics. Both of them – during the winter – have the free run of the great library on the ground floor of the castle; but the most rare books are probably hidden in a great cupboard, kept always locked, on the second floor of the Saracen Tower. It’s from one of the books out of this cupboard that Jerome copied many pages in Greek, that he then passed on to young Giordano, who – thanks to his natural gift for figures – worked out what they meant and thus wrote his first book, My Little Abacus, in which he explained the surprising and then still unknown use of the new indo-arabic numerical notation. The book was then sold to a young Pisan merchant (a friend of Raniero Capocci, the abbot of Sant’Anastasio and of Nemi), Leonardo di Bonaccio, who in turn developed it, producing the first great treatise on the new Indian numbers, the Liber abaci, which was to mark a turning-point in the history of science. But how had the Greek pages come to end up in that book? And what was the text in question? And why had Giordano already several times, for no apparent reason, betaken himself into the basilica of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, fascinated by the mosaic of St. Sebastian? And what were the General of the Cistercian Order, Arnauld-Amaury, and Pope Innocent III coming to do at Nemi the next day? During the night Giordano relives, in a dream, a terrifying story that happened on the 22nd of July more than five centuries before.

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The great Armenian astronomer and mathematician Ananias of Shirak – persecuted by the church and the law for his revolutionary ideas – has entrusted to three of his pupils (David, Eznik and Aser) the Keys of Knowledge, so that they shall take them to the West. It is the year 662: the Arabs are making themselves the masters of everything, and burning every book that they find in their path. The Keys of knowledge are revolutionary scientific discoveries that can change the course of history and of mankind, the fruit of work by the Indians and Chinese. But so far the Orientals have not succeeded in impressing a decisive turn on that history. It is the turn of the West. Ananias’ three pupils take different roads. Aser leaves his ‘Paulician’ Christian community of Kibossa and arrives in Rome together with the Byzantine emperor Constans II: inside a leather bag from which he never lets himself be parted, he keeps two manuscripts of no apparent value. The letters of an almost unknown Byzantine writer, Theophilact Simocattas, and a palimpsest with some plays by Plautus rubbed down to make room for the Old Testament. Interleaved in these two manuscripts are many pages in Greek with the Keys of knowledge. After having had the mosaic icon of St Sebastian installed in the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, Aser goes with a learned Roman prelate to the lake of Nemi – to just where once the temple of Diana used to be – to observe a strange phenomenon in the ground. But he is knocked down, tied up and burnt alive by his companion, who robs him of the two manuscripts hidden in the leather bag fastened whit a bronze buckle inlaid with designs in gold.

Giordano wakes up, and – wracked with anguish – tells his companion the nightmare that he has just lived through. Old Jerome is at first incredulous, but then understands that something strange is really happening. The book from which he had copied the pages in Greek with the revolutionary Indian numbers was in actual fact a text of some comedies of Plautus… although he was sure that it was not a palimpsest. Then Giordano’s exact description of the bronze buckle makes him jolt with astonishment. He fetches a bag and shows it to the younger man: he found it the day before, while working in the fields near the lake, just where there had once stood the temple of the goddess Diana. Delirium, nightmare, legend, reality… by now the two men do not need to probe any more deeply. They realise that all this is not just fortuitous. Something serious is threatening the world… and it certainly has something to do with the meeting at Nemi between the Pope and the General of the Order and papal legate in Provence, Arnauld-Amaury.

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Giordano hides himself in the Saracen tower, in a niche on the second floor, behind some shelves loaded with books. It is just here – where there is the small and mysterious book-case – that the meeting takes place. They talk about the false Donations of Costantine. Finally, Innocent III decrees the extermination of the heretic Cathars and of the people of Occitania. Then he takes out of locked cupboard three precious manuscripts, containing “the essence of secular and revolutionary science, the knowledge that could endanger the future of the realm of the Church”, and consigns them to the legate Arnauld-Amaury, so that he shall take them with him to France and have them safely kept by Friar Elia. These extraordinary books – the letters of Theophilact Simocattas and two books of comedies by Plautus – are no longer safe in the Saracen tower of Nemi, because part of their contents have already been divulged. He summons his counsellor-confessor Abbot Raniero Capocci and shows him My little Abacus, by Jordanus de Nemore… which had been sold to the abbot’s own Pisan friend Leonardo seven years before, by a young man “of agile physique, short in stature and with thick black curly hair…” Giordano is discovered, but manages to run away, and – by means of the drain that leads from the lake of Nemi into the valley of Aricia – he takes ship and lands at Marseille; from there he sets out for the first city mentioned by Arnauld-Amaury: Béziers, the Devil’s lair, the Synagogue of Satan.

From that moment on there is a change in the life of the young scholar Giordano Nemorario (who henceforth will call himself Palis Jordanus): his continual devotion to study is overlaid with other preoccupations. He goes on trying to trace the three precious manuscripts; but what the Church, with the interested help of allies like the kings of France, is preparing to bring about – that is, the extermination of an entire, free and rebellious people – comes to involve him more and more. He is welcomed by the tolerant people of Béziers, whose sense of hospitality, taste for life and love of justice persuade him to stay there; to share his destiny with them. Giordano meets, and falls reciprocally in love with, Jolanda. For a time they work for Shimon, a Jewish merchant, the father of Sara and David, two children who become much attached to the young couple. Then they move into the free quarter of town, the parish of La Maddalena, into the Cathar’s house, where Giordano opens a school to teach the children of the city their letters and numbers. On the 14th of June 1208 the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau is assassinated by a squire of Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, the lord of the Languedoc. This bloody act gives the pope an immediate reason to sound the war trumpets.

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Giordano, in the meantime, has heard the preaching at Béziers of Guilhabert de Castres, the future Cathar bishop who will become so important in his life. While preparations for war get under way, Giordano does not give up hope of finding the manuscripts; but he cannot even get near to the Cistercian mother-abbey of Cîteaux. So he goes on with his own mathematical and mechanical studies. He loves Jolanda, and she is going to have a child by him: she is sure it will be a girl, with long blonde hair. They will call her Esclarmonde. The command of the powerful Army of Christ (which is over five hundred thousand men strong) is assigned to Arnauld-Amaury. On the 21st of July of 1209 this crusading army lays siege to Béziers. The citizens unanimously reject the demand made by the white abbot that they hand over 223 people (and among them the little astronomer and mathematician Palis Jordanus from the suburb of La Maddalena), and get ready to defend their freedom. But during the night a number of the brigands and murderers whom the crusaders have recruited, hide themselves in the water-cisterns built against the inside of the walls, getting in through the tunnels built by some traitors. The next day, the feast-day of St Mary Magdalen and of the liberation of Béziers, while the traitors make a show under the walls of the cathedral of St.-Nazaire, thus distracting everyone’s attention, the brigands and murderers get inside the walls on the other side of the city, by the Porte St.-Guillaume, and open the gates and passages: in a few hours the entire population are exterminated. The powerful engines of war constructed by little Palis Jordanus have been of no use at all. Among the thousands of corpses that cover the floor of the church of St Mary Magdalen, Giordano (disguised as a crusader by Shimon, before Shimon’s own death) finds David, little Sara and his own Jolanda with her belly cut open. His little Esclarmonde, carved out of her mother’s womb, has been murdered before she could see the light of day. Giordano – in a state of desperation – nonetheless keeps the promise that he made to his friends the captain of the garrison, Bernard de Servian, and to Shimon and to Jolanda, and leaves the city through a tunnel that takes him from the new castle to a place right outside the walls, in a little wood. He collects his books, hidden by Jolanda in the old mill, and makes his way towards the refuge of the Cathar bishop Guilhabert de Castres, in the Pyrenees: the impregnable pentagonal castle of Montségur. While the crusade against the rebellious people of Occitania goes on, and the army of Christ destroy fields, towns, crops and entire populations, Guilhabert urges Giordano to leave Occitania, to continue his studies elsewhere, and never to give up hope of being able – one day – to wrest the

6 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters keys of knowledge from the ferocious white abbot. Giordano leaves Montségur and strikes north, towards a new life.

While the epic tragedy of Occitania and the Cathars – with human bonfire after human bonfire – goes on, on the 9th of April of 1229 in the Great Hall of the University of Paris there is a meeting of all the masters of the University. Many students have been massacred by the city authorities. Only the theologians fail to come to the meeting. It’s a campaign for the freedom to teach, for freedom of thought. The last to speak is the mathematician and astronomer Giovanni de Sacrobosco, the most distinguished person present. In a most persuasive speech, he too declares himself in favour of giving up the university. As he leaves the hall, he firmly tightens the belt with the bronze buckle inlaid with designs in gold. Giordano Nemorario – for he, in fact, it is – having fled as far as Scotland, has taken the name of Giovanni de Sacrobosco. Having joined the Trinitarian order, and completed his studies at Oxford, he eventually comes to Paris and enters the monastery of the Maturins, very near to the University. As Giovanni de Sacrobosco he writes only three books: besides his Algorismus (Arithmetic), and De anni ratione (On the calendar), he writes an astronomical work that for several centuries remains the standard text-book in all the universities of Europe. De sphera (The Book of the Spheres). As Giordano Nemorario, however, he writes a great many books on mathematics and mechanics, whose inspiration seems to spring out of nowhere, such as Aritmetica, De numeris datis (On given numbers), Algorismus demonstratus (The Proofs of Arithmetic), De triangulis (On Triangles), and Elementa Jordani de ponderibus (Jordanus on weights and measures). After leaving Paris and its university, he sets off on a long journey in search of the three precious manuscripts, but does not find them at Cîteaux. He goes to all the Cistercian abbeys and libraries, including Fontfroide, to which Arnauld-Amaury had left some books before he died. But all in vain. So he goes back to Montségur, where he meets the third daughter of the lord of the castle, Esclarmonde de Perella, a most beautiful girl of twelve with long blonde hair. She is blind, and lives almost always in the castle, with her grandmother. Giordano feels a deep affection for this girl, who for him seems to represent his own little Esclarmonde, who was murdered at Béziers. He stays for some months there, letting himself be soothed by the peaceful life of the castle, but also collaborating with Guilhabert de Castres to improve the library of Montségur, which contains some very important books of religion, philosophy and science. A group of Cathar perfecti continually transcribe the texts, which are then disseminated among the people. Thousands of copies are made of works ranging from Aristotle to the

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Gospels, and hence distributed throughout all of war-torn Occitania; the Cathar bishops know that spreading the Word of Christ and of love will not suffice to make the people rebel: they also need knowledge, and the power of reason. Then Guilhabert urges Giordano to go back to the university in Paris, to carry on his struggle as a scientist, to keep looking for the keys of knowledge. Not to neglect this mission out of love for little Esclarmonde. Giordano goes back to Paris, where he resumes teaching, still under a false name… and thus the Maturin monk – and mathematician and astronomer – Giovanni de Sacrobosco, follows from far away the course of the war in Occitania, that is already drawing to its end.

It’s almost summer, in the year 1243. Occitania has been torn to pieces, conquered and subdued, its cities razed to the ground. There remains only one small knot of rebels ensconced in the small castle of Montségur, together with the last few Catharist preachers who have so far escaped the burnings. It is the last flame of hope and freedom in the whole of Christendom. Esclarmonde, too, is a prisoner of the siege in that castle. Giordano hurries to England, to his friend and fellow-scientist Roger Bacon. He meets him on Salisbury plain, in the ruins of the prehistoric temple of Stonehenge, because it is time for the beginning of the summer solstice. It’s the morning of the 21st of June. While he was studying in Paris, Roger Bacon had confided to Giordano that he was making experiments with the black powder… which could perhaps be of use – among its other possibilities – in battle. Unfortunately, he has as yet made no progress in that direction. But at the very moment of sunrise Giordano’s mind is shot through with memories: first, of the rays of sunlight coming through the iron gratings of the castle of Monségur, to rest on the lightless eyes of Esclarmonde; then he feels the force of the sunrise driving him towards other memories, into another tower… the Saracen tower of Nemi, some forgotten words, a phrase spoken by Arnauld- Amaury to Innocent III. Friar Elia as the ideal custodian for precious books, in the year 1207… what monastery could that be? And Roger Bacon shows him the mistake that he’s been making for all these years. They weren’t talking about a Cistercian abbey… but about a Benedictine one! And in fact Friar Elias was the abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Ste.-Colombe at Sens, a few hours walk from Paris! The keys of knowledge might really be there. Giordano parts from Roger Bacon, who has already guessed at the double identity of his friend. Giordano goes back to France, and quickly to Sens… and at last, in the abbey of Ste.-Colombe he succeeds in getting hold of Theophilact Simocattas’ letters and of one book of the comedies of Plautus; he cannot look for the

8 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters other one, before being discovered, and having to escape in a hurry. He goes back to the Maturin monastery, but there he finds several inquisitors already waiting for him. He leaves two letters with brother Thomas, and flees from Paris for the last time. But by now he is being pursued without respite. He stakes his all, trying to outwit his persecutors. He takes the road towards Montségur. In the cave near Tarascon he copies the Greek pages that are included in the two manuscripts, and then hides the originals in a crack in the rock. Then he arrives at the foot of the steep hill that is being besieged by an army of more than ten thousand men, and discovers that by the valley of Le Porteil, where the wall seems quite impossible to climb, every now and then someone does in fact get in or out of the castle. He gets to the top, with the help of Guihem Montanhagol (an Occitan poet and patriot), and at last can once more embrace Esclarmonde. He aims to make numerous copies of the keys of knowledge; and then leave the castle for ever, together with the girl, to take refuge beyond the Pyrenees, in the hospitable small town of Berga. But Escalrmonde is an invalid – as well as being blind – and can no longer walk far. Giordano nonetheless makes many copies of The Path of the Sun, with the revolutionary scientific discoveries that had come from Armenia in the year 662, and begins to evacuate the precious library of Montségur. But he no longer tries to escape, being called to a high destiny along with his dear Esclarmonde and the last of the Cathars. During the months in which the impregnable fortress is being besieged, there is a battle of wits between the inquisitor Friar Ferrier, who is in command of the crusading army, and Giordano. Friar Ferrier wants to get his hands not only on the castle and the Cathars, but also on Giordano and the keys of knowledge. The evening before the surrender four men, each with a copy of The Path of the Sun, climb down the terrible wall and flee. On the morning of the 16th of March, 1244, a gigantic pyre is built at the foot of Montségur, and more than 210 Cathars are burn alive. Among them, clasped together at the same stake, Esclarmonde’s grandmother Marquesia, her mother Corba, Esclarmonde herself and Giordano. Before consigning them to the flames, Friar Ferrier informs Giordano that the four fugitives have been taken, and thus all the books and all the copies of The Path of the Sun, with the keys of knowledge. There will be no scientific revolution. The world will go on following its well-regulated course. And history will never know who Giordano Nemorario was: his name will be confused with that of the first great inquisitor in history, Jordanus of Saxony.

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Giordano dies, burnt alive together with the people whose struggle he has shared, together with the girl whom he has loved as if she were his own daughter. But Friar Ferrier is not victorious. Giordano has given him his body to devour, while Guilhem Montanhagol – with a copy of the keys of knowledge hidden in his horse’s saddle, and disguised as a crusader – leaves Occitania and rides towards Oxford, to find Roger Bacon. But he is captured shortly before he arrives, and of him no record remains. Giordano had left one other way open, perhaps the last hope. The night before the surrender, he had briefed little Perella, the servant- girl in the castle of Montségur, and friend of Esclarmonde. This brave girl hides herself in a cleft in the rock outside the castle. Then, when the appalling fire has burnt itself out, and the crusading army have struck their tents, Perella creeps out and pretending to be a leper makes her way to the cave near Tarascon. There she collects the two precious original manuscripts, and sets out for a new country, a place in which to lay the foundations for – one day – consigning the keys of knowledge to someone who shall at last cause them to see the light of day.

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Chapter I

As I take my pen in hand, I realise that it will not be easy to disentangle the knotted threads of historic events from the story of my own life. Still harder will it be to calm my own mind, torn to shreds as it is with horrors, drenched in tears and blood. But I must tread this backwards path into the past with a clear head, so as not to lose the sense of what it is that has inspired my struggles. And the better I succeed in restraining my own rage and agitation, the better service will I have rendered to history, and the better homage to the memory of all those who have suffered death in a massacre that is without precedent… a slaughter that, as I write this, has not yet reached its terrible finale. The story – this story – cannot but start from one long, summer night.

It was towards the end of July of the year 1207. The moon lit up Diana’s mirror, the lake of Nemi. I was tired: that day we had really broken our backs polishing the castle clean from top bottom… but it was a splendid summer night, and every now and then a merciful breath of wind blew from the poplars and the chestnut-trees of the sacred wood: for this reason I was leaning outwards at the small window. Our hut was the last one of the chicken-run, right at the top of the volcanic rock, sheer above the lake. It was there that Jerome (or, as I flatly called him, the old man) had spent his whole life. I was almost certain that even he himself didn’t know how old he really was, however much he swore and reswore that he had seen only fifty spring-times. Always frowning, he grumbled continually, spitting a stream of blasphemies beyond all emulation between his teeth, chewing the cud of rage and resentment against the whole world. For the moment he was resting. He was probably not asleep: I could infer his twisting and turning in bed from the rustling of the straw of the mattress. At least he wasn’t complaining. I took advantage of the fact, to stay longer at the window, my gaze following the specks of burning gold of the fire-flies flickering down towards the lake. But soon afterwards the harsh voice sounded behind my back, in the darkness. So, Giordano, are you going to extract yourself from that hole in the wall, or not? Or do you want to take all the fresh air for yourself and have me crack up with this stifling heat? Come and rest… and stop thinking about it: you’ll never manage to bring those bloody boats up to float again!”

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It was one of the many ways of starting up our interminable nightly conversations: tingeing them in these slightly warlike colours, made them more agreeable. That night the old man was more pugnacious than ever. He too was very tired. In the hut the last of the stuffy heat of the day still infested the air; and the summer would still be very long and slow to come to an end: only then would the Abbot and his monks leave the castle, to go back to the monastery of St Anastasius in Rome. And the two of us would throw our white monkish cassocks to the winds, and regain our freedom for another long, long winter. I lay down beside Jerome just as the fitful breeze changed direction, and blew through the hut next door, taking up, from the lamb-skins hung there to dry, the last stinking gusts that filled my nostrils with nausea. “Old man… remember that one day, those ships… I shall haul them out from down there. I promise you.” “And in what way, my valiant disciple? By getting the goddess Diana to help you… or with some magic art? Or with one of your mysterious calculations?” This said with a snort of disbelief, an almost satanic sneer. “Not by magic. By a system of pulleys and levers: for which the plans are already made; or if that doesn’t work, we shall have to build a machine. It would be splendid to make a boat that would slide under the water, so as to then tie the Roman ships to it and drag them to the shore.” “A boat… a ship that sails under the water and not on it! By the fields of Paradise… hic homo sanus non est! I was afraid you’ld go mad one day… and it’s all my fault, because of those books that I allowed you to read. Those people are right… oh, are they not! Books drive one mad.” He seemed truly upset about it. “But no, old man, you needn’t worry: I’m perfectly compos mentis. The fact is, I’m not sure where to start from… but I’m sure it’s not impossible. You’ll see, one day we’ll pull out those ships, you and I, and from being a humble Cistercian lay-brother, you’ll rise to the highest honours: they’ll make you abbot, but not of Aquae Salviae: of Cîteaux!” I laughed too, as I made this prediction, but he began grumbling even louder, spitting out imprecations: “Hell’s flood! I really think it wasn’t a great action of mine, to take you out of that basket, and be a father and mother to you… Abbot! Me abbot!” And lowering his voice: “Priests, monks, abbots, bishops, cardinals, popes… holy father!” “Old man, why all this trembling? Whatever’s this whispering? Are you starting to feel the flames under your feet? Who’ld ever think that you’re half- way to being a friar…” “I’m a converso, a lay brother: I’m a free soul, I am!”

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“But you wear the monks’ white cassock.” “And you don’t? Don’t you do the same?” “But I’m not complaining. I’ll never end up in the flames. While you already know your end.” “I’ve nourished a serpent under my roof, an asp in my bosom…” We’d begun this conversation innumerable times already. Soon afterwards he went on, grumbling: “It’s not right: my lords the monks in the warm all winter, in the monastery in Rome – warning themselves with Junoesque Mary Magdalens… not much orare and lots of laborare… and then here in the summer, to enjoy the cool, fresh air! Because there’s no risk of malaria at Nemi. While this half-lame old man goes and works their double-damned fields by the shores of the lake! Under this blazing sun! Come and sweat blood yourselves! Hang a few lamb-skins up to dry in your cells! Share the whiffs of this balmy scent with us! Cursed disciples of the Devil: they’ll be eating the lambs tomorrow, nicely roasted, along with the great lords… Oh, but God will punish them. God is just, and they’ll roast in hell for ever and ever. And they’ll be buried under mountains of rotten meat, too, to serve them right. The day of judgement will come… oh, won’t it just!” “And that day you’ll be condemned to the eternal furnace, too… you know that, don’t you?” “Yes, yes I know. But before going down there, I want to say a few words to St Peter… oh yes, I really want to tell him something! Because you see, the world is wide, and swarming with poor creatures who have more need of Christ’s word than we Latins do… Eh yes, think if he’d laid that stone in the midst of the populations of Tartary! Do you see? It would have been so much better there, in the midst of the barbarians: that’s where he should have founded his Church… and not here, in Rome. After all, here people already knew about the idea of hell, and heaven; even purgatory, come to that!” “But what are you saying?” “Oh Lord God… forgive him his arrogance, not to speak of his ignorance: there you have the new generation! But what do you think? Just because you can count up to four, you think you know more than me? I’ve really read those books of the monks and the priests: I know the story, I know what happened. But you, always looking for mathematical formulae, numbers, symbols, dead things, with no life in them… But why? We’re the only lucky fellows in this damnedest world, the only ones who have the run of an entire library in which there’s a bit of everything! And you’ve been lucky enough to find me…” “No, old man. If the abbot, instead of you, had seen the basket that day… by now, at the very least, I’ld be private secretary to the Holy Father.”

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I was teasing him, in order to break off that panegyric of his, that by now I knew by heart. Just as he knew – from A to Z – all my sallies. That way I managed, by a sudden interruption, to avoid the expected blow, while he went on, more and more hotly: “… but you haven’t known how to profit by it! Apart from the vulgar tongue, I’ve been able to teach you some good Latin and a little Greek… but to what end? To see you go crazy after those numbers. And you’ve even caught me up in them! Making me copy out whole pages of confounded bloody Arabic numbers, and physical formulae. But what’s the use of them? And you’ve never even opened a book of history, or philosophy.” “With you around, I know what colour hair every one of the emperors had. And I know what they died of: all of them, poisoned. And I know the cause of all the evils on earth: monks and priests. You see? In two words, I’ve told you the whole history of humanity.” And I laughed at him, being careful to avoid the inevitable blow on its way. “Bastard… Oh, how I understand your sainted mother! But don’t you see? I’ve given you the chance to read, to study, to understand what the greatest of men thought – the greatest man, after Our Lord Jesus Christ, who’s ever lived on earth: Aristotle. And what do you do? Where do you go poking your nose? In his books of physics!” “Old man, he too was fond of figures.” “But not of them only: there’s the difference; it’s only those wretched scribbles that matter to you, while you’re completely, utterly uninterested in the world you’re living in. You’ve thrown yourself headlong into the study of numbers because you can play with them as you please, without appealing in any way to God or to your own conscience. You don’t know what’s going on around you: the world could come to an end tomorrow and you wouldn’t care; they could tell you you’ll be going down to hell forever, the day after… and I’m sure you’ld go there quite happily, so long as they’ld give you an abacus to count all the damned souls with! Isn’t that true? If only you’ld at least manage to make something out of it for us…” Sensing that I was on the point of interrupting him, he put a horny hand hard over my mouth: “… yes all right! Once it did serve to buy us a brazier… But – damnation take it! – I’ld rather have cracked up with the cold, rather than that you let that book go like that! Why? A boy of fourteen summers succeeds in writing a book so important that it fills even old Jerome with pride… and what does he do? He sells it for tuppence-halfpenny, to buy us a piece of old iron; and as if that wasn’t crazy enough, who does he sell it to? To a fellow who’s a friend of our learned abbot Raniero! And he thanks God that noone has yet identified the great idiot mathematician Jordanus de Nemore…

14 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters with the simple-minded lay brother of the castle of Nemi! But have you heard what that Pisan has done? It seems he’s rewritten your book in his own way! And now, all puffed up as proud as Lucifer, he goes about saying that he’s the first person to have discovered the Arabic numbers and the zero… God in Heaven! As soon as you really had hit on something… nugae non erant.” “It’s better like that: what use would they have been to me? Those new Indian numbers with the zero are more useful for trade than for anything else. And Bonaccio’s son is a merchant, someone who travels a lot, and can spread the use of these numbers all over the place. What does it matter if he says that he’s discovered them? Come to that, it wasn’t even me did so: talking of which, what book did you copy those pages from? You really don’t remember?” “No, by Hercules! And even if I did manage to, I’ld never tell you, lest perhaps you’ld manage to find some other diabolical…” “… and write another book, and sell it and buy us a big, soft wool mattress for next winter.” “Lord God, those numbers really have buggered up your brain! Thinking of a woollen mattress in this heat… By Acheron!”, and he sighed with discouragement.

While the old man went on grumbling, I thought back to that day of six years ago. It was early summer and I had gone – sent by our abbot Berardo – to the Cistercian monks of the church of Santa Maria di Fulano, at Ostia. In a bag was my first book; Jerome had bound it for me, and impressed onto the binding the title: My little abacus, by Jordanus de Nemore. How happy I was, in the tavern, when I took part in the heated discussion between the young Pisan and the pretentious old man who was giving himself airs as a know-all, both of them fired up by many large glasses of beer. The Pisan had also stood me a big glass of rose-flavoured julep. They talked of their travels. I heard about the East, and was fascinated. Then the old one began to give himself airs as a great calculator, as a man who wielded the abacus as a knight his sword… and the young one, perhaps out of excessive politeness, could find nothing to object, talking only respectfully but a bit vaguely about the possibility of applying mathematics to all the sciences. So I put a question to the sage; can you calculate how many pairs of rabbits will get born in a year, starting from one single pair, if each month each pair produces a new pair that in turn reproduce in their second month? The old man remained, literally, open-mouthed. Then he called me a rude fellow… while the Pisan’s eyes shone, and he asked me if I was really able to solve the problem. And when mine host gave me a piece of charcoal, and I

15 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters wrote on the floor – in the new numbers – the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, explaining that each number – after the first two – was the sum of the two previous figures, the young Pisan began to say it was incredible: how had I come to know of these Arabic numerals? He wanted me to come on board his ship, he told me so many things, we talked mostly about numbers… but I told him nothing about my own life. However, I sold him the book, because I could see that he would make good use of it. And with the few imperial shillings that I’d made from it, I bought – from a Jewish shopkeeper – a very good iron brazier for my grumbly old man.

A firefly had come in through the window, but quickly flickered back towards the bright moonlight. “Giordano…” “Tell me.” “D’you find it tiresome, having to put up with an awful old man like me?” “On the contrary, it’s an honour.” “Giordano… without waiting any longer, you ought to go back to Ostia, take ship to Pisa, and look up your friend Leonardo again: together you’ld do great things.” “In a year or two. At present I’m too… too uncertain.” “I suppose it’s a question of mathematical uncertainties… not any moral or philosophical ones. Or am I wrong?” “No, old man, you’re not wrong at all!” And we had one of those fits of laughter that used to reconcile us to the entire world. “Old man, don’t embitter your existence. You believe deeply in God and in another life: that’s the most important thing. Forget about priests, monks, popes, kings and emperors.” “I can’t: one can’t isolate oneself the way you do.” “I’m sorry, Jerome… but I’ld rather study, than moan and give in to despair. Yes, I’m a serf, like all these poor wretches of peasants who live around here. I’m a lay brother of the summer residence of the monks of St Anastasius, I sweat blood every day just so that I can eat, I’m forbidden to study. But every summer comes to an end. And every winter I go on working like a brute beast. And the days are short, the monks aren’t here any more: they’ve gone back to Rome. And while our friends the peasants crawl into their damp, cold beds, to await a dawn that for them will never come… I start to live. I can get into the castle, throw off the mask of idiocy that I’m constrained to put on during the summer… and get drunk on the dust of two whole libraries! I can study, old man… and try to really bring a new dawn to

16 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters life. And while I’m studying, I’m free: while my mind is enquiring and learning, I’ve conquered slavery.” “So you know perfectly well that we’re nothing but slaves, like all these other wretches who live in filthy huts like this one, around here, in the fowl- pen… because it really is just like a chicken-house! Some slaves of the priests, some of the nobles… but all slaves. Always ground down. And what for? To enable our masters to live in luxury. Geoffrey of Troyes said: ‘The peasants who work for everyone else, who toil at all hours, in all seasons, who bow themselves to the servile tasks scorned by their masters, are always oppressed: and this to provide for the gay life, the fine clothes, the frivolity of others. They get burned out of their homes, and are then compelled to buy back their chattels or their very selves from their oppressors; or they get killed by violence, or die of hunger, after being subjected to every king of torment. The poor cry out, the widows weep, the orphans moan, the tortured bleed and bleed.’ The ill, the weak, the crippled are cancelled out, excluded from this world. Likewise the lepers. And the Jews. Illness and infirmity are the self- evident signs that we bear of our innate sinfulness: just because I limp, I’m treated as if I’m cursed by God and man… and the monks and the abbot put up with me reluctantly. The word liberty doesn’t exist: the only free man is he who has a powerful protector. And as if it wasn’t enough that we have to have princes, dukes, counts, kings and emperors… here come they, the priests! They steal a whole religion, they take possession of Christ’s words of love – and the words of the love of Christ! – and they too clamber up onto the throne, along with all the other potentates of the earth. And they’re not content simply to live a life of luxury and ease, and to crush the people with taxes… no! They’re deforming the image and twisting the will of God, they’re exciting and provoking fear and terror of Him… instead of love: they’re turning him not into the best of Gods, but into the strongest, to whom no other god whatever will be able to oppose himself, ever. They’re turning the love of Christ into a Christianity of fear. Instead of exhorting people to turn their eyes towards Heaven, they do all they can to make sure they’re turned below, towards Hell. The people have to live in fear of Satan. They say we’re born workers and peasants, nobles or priests, bishops and abbots. And nobody may budge from his condition, because that’s a mortal sin, of the worst kind: any innovation is a monstrous offence. The Church condemns it! The Church condemns any new invention! The people sweat and carve out a bit of land from the forests? And here comes the novale… a new tithe for the Church, on the new lands. You’ve gathered some honey? Pay a tithe. Our lord abbot… what does he do? He comes here for St Matin’s day, takes everything that we’ve harvested, leaves us orders and plenty of work to do… and goodbye till next summer.

17 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters

Usurers, rich men and robbers: all they have to do is make a will in favour of the Church, and as soon as they’re dead, straight up to Heaven, directly, without even having to pass through purgatory, or spend any time there: They sell the life eternal! And all the famines and the wars that turn this poor world upside down aren’t enough for them: so the popes too, with their crusades… and with the blessing of our spiritual father – his highness Bernard of Clairvaux – who declared that the crusade is a an exquisite invention of the Lord, thanks to which he takes into his service assassins, rapists, adulterers, perjurers and criminals of every kind… and by this means offers them the chance of salvation…” He paused for breath, I felt him turn towards me: “Giordano… have I ever told you how the crusades began?” And without waiting for my reply, knowing that, yes, he had told me, but that anyway he was determined to tell me the story all over again, he went on: “In 1096 – while they were on the march towards the Holy Land – the crusaders gave themselves a little military exercise in Lorraine, by massacring more than two hundred Jews, sacking their houses and their synagogues, and sharing out the plunder. Then they descended on Mainz, rounded up another whole Jewish community, more than seven hundred people, and slaughtered every man, woman and child of them: many of the mothers, rather than see their poor creatures hurled alive into the flames, slit the throats of their little ones themselves, before being cut to pieces in their turn. The uncircumcised, as they proceeded towards the Holy Land, were proud of having begun their expedition in the best possible way… by killing, if not yet any Saracens, at least some inveterate enemies of Christ! On the 15th of July, three years later, other crusaders – led by important dukes and counts – stormed the city of Jerusalem, slaughtering the entire Jewish and Saracen population. And all this, not to speak of what happened three years ago…” He grunted, and spat. “D’you remember what I’ve always said the crusades were aimed at? At Byzantium! That was the popes’ and the crusaders’ real objective! And from the first moment that he was elected, I said it: Innocent III will do it; and so he did. The first news of it is only just beginning to reach us: a few days ago I heard our new abbot Raniero talking about it with brother Anselm, telling him that Zara – a city infested with Bogomil heretics – has at last been reconquered by catholic Venice; and that the schismatics of Byzantium have paid for their sin of wilfully separating themselves from the Holy Roman Church. That’ll teach those Greeks to bake the Host with yeast-risen bread… instead of unleavened, like we do! D’you see, Giordano? Byzantium, that Christian city, has fallen to the soldiers of Christ! To those thugs who’d taken the Cross from the Pope’s legates, who promised them an eternity of Heaven – to them, who

18 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters went on to burn down almost the whole city, raping nuns and young girls – in the streets, on the altars… trampling holy relics underfoot, sacking palaces and churches, murdering and plundering, destroying monuments and works of art, singing and dancing with harlots in the churches. And in the midst of all this inferno the monks, camp-followers of the crusaders as they too are, were stuffing stolen gold and holy relics – stolen out of the churches – under their cassocks.” He broke off for a moment, and then resumed: “And d’you know what abbot Raniero said? That perhaps some of those precious pieces will end up at Aquae Salviae. A chalice of sardonyx, enamel, silver-gilt, glass and pearls. A marvellous paten with an enamelled Christ, with alabaster, rock- crystal and pearls, and finally a most precious icon of the Crucifixion, on a ground of lapis lazuli. Gold, silver-gilt, enamel, glass… and lapis lazuli!” “But out of all that booty, there’s something for us, too, that’s found its way here: that box of manuscripts that you’ve had to carry up and put away in the tower, comes from the sack of Byzantium… as a present for the Holy Father. And so, if they don’t lock it up in that damned safe, there’ll be a winter like real scholars, for us two.” “The devil take you, and keep you locked up in hell for ever! you can see your own advantage in everything … and don’t tell me you were only joking, because I’m sure the mere idea of those manuscripts made you forget how much innocent blood’s been shed for them. Don’t you feel anything, at the thought that a city that in itself contained more history and culture than all the rest of the West and the East put together… that now that city’s nothing but ashes?” Without giving me time to reply, he went on: “You need to take a wide view of history, like I do, to understand a lot of things. The priests have founded the power of the Church on a forgery… the forgery of the Donations of Constantine: they’ve invented and written the lie, that the emperor left Rome and the Italian peninsula and all the provinces of the empire, to the Pope! And as if that wasn’t enough, Pope Gregory VII sets down a memorandum – the Dictatus Papae – in which he says that the Roman Church has never erred, nor ever will err, in perpetuity; that he alone can, if it suits him, establish new laws and gather in new peoples; his name and title to authority are unlike any other in the right to depose the emperors; his pronouncements must not be modified by anyone… Straight after this, in 1099, here comes Pascal II… the first pope to assume the imperial crown. In 1130, under Innocent II, the pontifical Curia decides and decrees that Constantine had also given the pope the power to confer the crown and the sword on the emperor: in practical terms, the sole right to dispose of the rule of the world! In the face of such assumptions, you can imagine what hopes

19 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters what poor devil Arnold of Brescia could have… Arnold the ascetic, the man who neither east nor drinks, the revolutionary… comes to Rome, tries to rouse the Romans to awareness, to make them understand that the Donation of Constantine is false. He causes our ex-abbot of Aquae Salviae, Bernardo Paganelli – now Pope Eugenius III – to flee from Rome… but Bernard of Clairvaux halts him, conferring on him the two swords: that of the spiritual and that of the temporal power; he is accorded the supremacy in both realms… while Arnold dreams of Rome free from popes and emperors.” Jerome took a deep breath: “And here you see how power closes its ranks when the people try to assert themselves. In 1155 Frederick Barbarossa comes to the aid of pope Hadrian IV, handing over Arnold to him: that lone hero is condemned as a heretic by the tribunal of the Church, hanged, burned… and his ashes thrown into the Tiber. Poor Arnold: he had dared to preach that the Curia was a trading-house, a den of thieves… and to predict that the clerics who held landed possessions, the bishops who were feudal lords and the monks who owned property, would all be damned.” He spat, and muttered some imprecation: “Meanwhile the abuses, the scandals and the oppression of the priests get harder and harder to bear, and this provokes a great sprouting up of heresies all over the place: the umiliati, the Waldenses… but above all those bugbears of the Church, the Cathars! Pope Alexander III, in fact, officially condemns them at the third Lateran Council of 1169. This is a date which will not easily be forgotten: for the first time in history, the idea is mooted of a crusade against the heretics! A war! An army! Alexander’s successor, Lucius III then asks the help of the emperor Frederick Barbarossa: from their conference at Verona in 1184 there is proclaimed the first great religious, and at the same time political, condemnation of the heretics. The ground has now been prepared: there needs only a war-leader, who must be also a great politician… and here he comes: Lothar of the Counts of Segni, the present Pope Innocent III! Chosen by a sign from heaven!” A sarcastic laugh, a fist punched into the mattress: “Think of it – Lothar had been training a dove for three years… three years! But on the day of the election… what does our feathered friend do? Flies onto a table where there was some elderberry dye, and gets black all over! She was the only one that had been trained, so the cardinal couldn’t wring the wretched creature’s neck. In a frightful hurry, he had to summon a painter, who used the whitest and most resistant of pigments to give a new, brilliant whiteness to the bird. All went well, because during the election – in the Temple of the Sun – three poor doves were thrown into the air… but only one had been trained. And in fact it flew straight onto the shoulder of Lothar: a divine omen! a miracle! God has chosen him! the whitest of the doves has perched on him: he is the chosen

20 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters one! Let him be made Pope! However, the impertinent bird – whether because upset by the smell of the paint… or because it had divined the satanic character of the newly elect – deposited a portentous load of bird-shit on the great Lothar’s head! The dove was deservedly roasted… and was a resounding success at the banquet, even more than it had been as a divine messenger!” At last Jerome’s croaking voice fell silent: I thought he’d come to the end of his as usual so pointed history lesson… but I was very wrong; I heard and felt him shifting about: soon he had lit a candle. He was feeling under the mattress: he raised himself half-upright, he transfixed me with a glance from his two piercing eyes, and from a linen cloth unwrapped a bundle of many sheets of parchment. I glanced at the written contents: the handwriting was his… these were notes that he took now and then, although unnecessarily; being gifted – my old man – with a very clear mind, strengthened by an excellent memory. He passed a horny hand over his long, thinning, white hair, then across his lined and shrivelled face: in his bloodshot eyes there flickered a suspicious, cautious look. He looked hard at me, breathing heavily: “These are extracts copied from the Treatise on the Misery of Man, a book that our present pope wrote when he was a cardinal. Listen carefully. I’m old, I’ve even lived too long already, but you’re not going to end your life in this squalid barn. So you had better start to get to know your master… the one, that is, who gives the orders outside this hut: like it or not, directly or indirectly, your life will depend entirely on this demoniac. Remember that thanks to him, sin is no longer simply a matter for one’s Christian conscience, but it’s a question of public law: it’s the ratio peccati. He doesn’t simply style himself the vicar of St Peter, but the Vicar of Christ! And he’s rapidly reducing the whole word to submission. One by one, he’s making kings and emperors prostate themselves at his feet.” His tone of voice, his grim face, were excessively serious: “But listen, old man: what’s so surprising in all this? He’s certainly not the first, and he won’t be the last. Every pope has tried to do that. This one’s just a bit better at it than the others. That’s all.” “Listen to these quotations: ‘Man is made of mud, of dust and ashes, and even more miserably, of filthy semen; he is conceived in the excitement of the flesh, in the heat of lust, in the foul odour of lechery; and even worse, with the stain of sin upon him; he is born to toil, to pain, to fear, and sadder still, only to die. Why did I not die in my mother’s womb, or at least, why did I not expire as soon as born? Would that I had been slain within her womb, so that her body would have been my grave, and my conception eternal in her vagina! What is the first vesture of man? Oh, wretched, nothing but a disgusting scrap of bloody flesh. The plants produce flowers and fruits, but you, oh man, what

21 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters do you produce? Worms, spittle, manure. You produce nits, fleas and lice; you give out nothing but spit, shit and piss; you spread the stink of corruption. You return to your own sins like a dog to its vomit; conceived of blood poisoned with the heat of lust… your carcase will be welcomed by the worms, in its tomb. Alive, you generated fleas and lice: dead, flies and worms.’” The old man’s voice fell silent. I was gazing fixedly at the thin sliver of moon that shone through the window: I breathed in a sudden gust of the stink of rotting meat. But I was filled with unease of a different kind: such thoughts had never brushed my mind… and that man really was taking control over the whole world. “Hide those pages, Jerome… and put out the candle: you know very well that beyond being allowed to learn by heart the Miserere, the Credo and the Paternoster, we’re forbidden to read books, to study at all or get any king of learning. Or do you really want to feel the thrill of the bonfire? Old man, far from being a well of wisdom, you seem to me to have caught the vocation of one of these poor moths drawn to that candle-flame…” He seemed to have calmed down: he began putting the pages back in order, then carefully wrapped them up in the dirty cloth, and hid them underneath the mattress; then he put out the candle. “Giordano…” “Tell me…” “Are you tired, sleepy? D’you want to go to sleep? Tell me, and I’ll shut this big mouth of mine.” “Yes, old man: I’m tired, and feeling sleepy. But I don’t want to go to sleep! And don’t shut your mouth: it’s thanks to it that I have some connection with the world I live in.” A grunt of satisfaction: “How far have you got with your triangles? One day will you decide to explain even to me what the devil it means to say that a point is that which determines a simple continuity.” He laughed quietly. “I’ve finished the book now… but you’ll never be able to understand what mathematical continuity means, what’s meant by the impossibility of determining a limit.” “Because I’m too stupid, perhaps?” “Yours is a wide-ranging mind, old man, not a narrowly concentrating one. We’re different. When I tackle a problem, I shut out the whole world: I feel nothing else, not tiredness, not these foul smells, not cold nor hunger. It’s it or me! I have to make it my own. To take possession of it, discover its secret, transform it, master it, make use of it. The laws of nature are out there, written since for ever: it’s we who don’t know how to read them. And I want to interpret one or two of them. But how can I explain to you in a few words

22 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters why an angle is produced by the meeting of two continuous figures at a final point of their continuity?” I’d said this with direct sincerity, with none of our usual joking irony. The old man was silent, while the silvery pallor of the moonlight dissolved the shadows inside the hut. A few slow and sleepless fireflies lingered at the window. Jerome grunted, his teeth grating against each other. “Old man, listen to me. I don’t disagree with you, I don’t think you’re wrong, for the fact that you’re always on your own, against everything and everyone. I just say that your expressions of opinion are jeremiads and panegyrics that lead one to the bonfire. By now, the noble knights of Christendom join the crusades merely in order to pillage and kill. Nobody any longer even conceives the idea of a noble cause… And foolish men like Arnold of Brescia – a world like ours really doesn’t need them. Either you adapt and bow your head, and shut your mind up in a box full of shit and darkness, or you fight. But not the way the fight’s been fought up till now. Not in your way.” “Then how, my young clever-clogs? Reveal me this mystery, I’m curious…” I’d never before lived through an argument with Jerome, with such intense feeling: “With numbers, old man… with numbers. With the formulae of Pythagoras, Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, Eratosthenes, Philipon, Boethius, Gerbert…” “…and of Jordanus Nemorarius, I don’t doubt.” “Yes, I’ll have something to say, too. And rest assured, if the world’s ever going to change, it’ll be through my sums and not through your ideas. It’ll be inventions that free mankind from slavery. It’ll be that apparatus that they’ve already been using for ages in the East, that’ll make it possible to sail – not only in summer, as they do already… but in winter as well. The age of heroes is over: they are counter-productive figures to popular progress: besides getting themselves killed, along with their followers, they do nothing but make the powers that be rigidify themselves even more than before, make them close ranks and devise new forms of repression and oppression. It’s you yourself who’ve always taught me that the world has always been the way it is, that a few have always ruled and written the history of humanity. A few men, who’ve always lived off the sweat of the many. Since forever. In whatever country.” I paused for breath: “It’s true… that once upon a time there arose a people who could change the face of the world: the Greeks! Plato! Aristotle. But unfortunately, afterwards the Romans wrecked everything. They took to Christianity and inflicted another grievous blow on the culture of the pagan world… by setting fire to the libraries of Pella, Athens, Antioch, Pergamum,

23 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters

Ephesus… and Alexandria! What little of that survived, flourished at Byzantium… and now Innocent III has sent the crusaders to finish it off. To burn the wisdom and the science of the greatest men in history. For that at least God will never forgive him, never…” The old man could hardly believe his ears: “Papae! So there is something about the priests that you can’t swallow! God be praised. It’s the books then, that are your Achiles’ heel…” A deep sigh of relief. “Yes… and not of philosophy, but mathematics, physics and astronomy. In those writings there was the key to the progress of humanity: by burning them, fifteen hundred years of history have been undone. It’s as if mankind – in a millennium and a half – hadn’t taken a single step forward. That the priests well know: that’s their aim: to keep the world standing still. Because if it moves, it will end by getting them off its back. It’s for that too that your humble pupil is studying. I too, old man, am fighting, in my fashion… but without any heroics: you can’t match, against a cold and calculating power, some over-excited dreamer: you can’t fight against a ballista or a mangonel, or a booby-trap, with a sling.” “Never, till that moment, had I seen everything so clearly: “The wheelbarrow and the hauling mechanisms that I’ve made have lightened some part of our hard work, for us and for the peasants of the chicken-run. The new attachment of the plough has much improved the work on the land. The invention of the mangle has revolutionised the terrible task of fulling cloth with one’s feet… and these are trifles compared to what could be done to lighten the work of man and release him from slavery and from hunger. Jerome… you can’t imagine how important was Aristotle: He was the first person to apply mathematics to physical phenomena. Wretched me… what didn’t I think I’d done, by finding the solution to a mere common second-class equation! That’s my trouble: I’m on own, I need the science of the ancient world, the little that you’ve been able to get for me isn’t enough. Every now and then some little flash of light strikes my mind. For some time, for instance, I can’t go on accepting the idea that the speed of an object is proportional to the distance travelled: the more I think about it, the less convincing it seems…” The old man’s comic voice intrudes on my serious ramblings: he never missed a chance of this kind to tease me: “Yes, now that I think of it… it’s the same for me: that must really be the reason why I so often can’t get to sleep… Oh, Lord God, grant a miracle to these your humble and sinful servants: let your omniscience illumine our poor minds, and – blazing with a pure radiance – let truth and light descend in us: tell us, oh Lord, to what is proportional the speed of a falling body… and so may we attain to eternal beatitude!” And he burst into pitying laughter.

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“Old man, you’re a blasphemer, a filthy Ghibelline… but God will probably make allowances for the confusional state in which your mind has always been enclouded, as a result of the terrible fall onto your head when you were a little boy… anyway, even if you can’t understand the revolutionary implications of my great little idea, I believe that the speed of a falling body is directly proportional to the time it takes to fall… and not to the space through which it falls! Oh, what wouldn’t I give to get hold of the works of the masters!” “And of their spirit?”, coming to the end of the long fit of laughter that had overtaken him just before. “Yes, old man, and their spirit!” And I stopped short, amazed myself at my own so much ardour. “Well, Giordano: all in all, I’ve sown a good seed… And if I’ve managed to give you at least a glimpse of the meaning of the word, freedom, I believe I’ve acquitted myself according to some of the teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” He sighed, yawned, coughed: “By now it’s got really late: If you can, try to get some sleep: tomorrow’ll be another hard day. As you well know, the pope has now taken to humility in dress… for himself and for the whole Curia: so no more furs of ermine or gorgeous colours… but simply lambskin coats. Lambs of Nemi! Besides which, we’ve got lots of skins already soaked in lime that are only waiting to be lightly scraped, pressed, dried, smoothed out with elbow-grease and pumice-stone… and then some of them delivered to my learned lords the monks of Grottaferrata, and some of them to our lord abbot Raniero Capocci, who’ll present them to our most illustrious and most holy father Innocent III, for him to write lots of lovely edicts of death and destruction, to be delivered all over the world. God… forgive us for what we’re doing: we too are collaborating in the triumph of Antichrist.” “Why today – more than ever – have you got it in so much for the pope?” “Haven’t I told you? Tomorrow morning, sometime between tierce and noon, right here, at our humble castle of Nemi, pope Innocent III is going to arrive! And not alone: there’ll be the big chief of all the Cistercians, too… the Abbot of Cîteaux, Arnauld-Amaury. And they’ll eat the tenderest young roast lamb.” I was struck limp – physically and mentally – with surprise: “You’re joking? But what are they coming to do, here at Nemi?” “No doubt Lucifer must have summoned them… and we can’t even get away into the fields: we’ve got to stay here, at the orders of the King of kings. God help us and forgive us.” Another sigh, and a yawn.

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“You’re your usual impatient, rebellious, heretic self. But what can you think’ll happen? It’ll be a day like so many others, nothing more nor less. So, let’s go to sleep. Sweet dreams, old man.” “To you too, Giordano… to you too.” And neither of us said another word. I was thinking about the fireflies. About the golden light that they enclosed within themselves. I stared at the little window, waiting: golden letters… a crown of martyrdom, red and gold… a sudden unexpected memory: who knows what paths the light had taken through my brain? “Old man… are you asleep?” He muttered: “No… but I’m trying to be…” “A strange thing. I’ve never told you about it… but now, thinking of it again… it was really strange…” An impatient sigh: “But what are you talking about?” “Soon after Easter I went to Aquae Salviae, to deliver a bale of parchment sheets and wool: d’you remember? And I walked around Rome…” “No, I don’t remember.” “Well, I went to the Monte Oppio to visit the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. Right inside the entrance there’s an altar dedicated to St Sebastian, with an image of the saint: a most beautiful mosaic. The saint is shown wearing a tunic and a chlamys, dressed just like a Byzantine official. In his hands, the crown of martyrdom, in red and gold. You know I don’t understand anything about art: all the same, that mosaic made me wonder, and I stood there in front of it for a long time. After a bit I felt the presence of someone behind me: I turned round: there was a priest, scrutinising me with sharp eyes. I felt as if I ought to explain my sudden fascination, and I asked him about the artist and the origin of the mosaic. D’you know what he said to me? ‘Why are you interested in this particular one, among all the beautiful thing that there are in this church?’ I didn’t know what to say… but my surprised face must have been more eloquent than any explanation. As if reassured, he gave me a dissertation on Byzantine art; on the consecration of the abbey of Montecassino, in 1071; on the abbot, Desiderio; and on the decoration of the abbey, at the hands of Byzantine artists. And he supposed that during that time one of them – who had a great devotion for St Sebastian – wanted to make this votive image and present it to the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli. That’s the story. I thanked him and went away.” A grunt from the old man encouraged me to go on. “Two months ago, not long before the monks arrived, rummaging in the library of the Saracen tower, unusually for me I was leafing through a book about churches and works of art: I’d happened in fact to pick up one about

26 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters that very church of San Pietro in Vincoli… and the searching glance of that prelate came back to mind. I looked for, and found, a very short note about the votive image of St Sebastian. There it said that – contrary to what oral tradition and some, clearly apocryphal, texts maintained – the mosaic was certainly from the time of the Great Plague, that is, at the end of the sixth century… the time of pope Gregory the Great. The note said that the image was made in order that St Sebastian should intercede with Our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away the plague for ever, and particularly at that time, seen as the imminent prelude to the Last Judgement. Underneath in minute writing, a few more lines, to the effect that the dating of the image to a time about 80 years later, that is to the year 680, when between June and September there was another terrible plague in Rome, was absolutely wrong. In any case, the mosaic was the work of a Roman artist: hence it was categorically to be excluded from the realm of possibility, that the image could have come from the East.” My tone of voice was one of complete finality: end of story. Jerome, after some initial murmur, went on in a bored, sleepy voice: “So? Someone is wrong: either the bishop, or the author of the manuscript; in either case, two priests, two vulgar creatures of Antichrist, who’ve got plenty of time to worry about mosaics, since they’ve always got nice full stomachs. What is it you think doesn’t add up, that interests you in such a senseless story? Hell, what a bad effect numbers and triangles have on the mind. Avaunt, Euclid, Archimedes and Pythagoras… and leave my poor Giordano alone! Ah, sleep well.” “You too, old man… but it still doesn’t add up, to my mind.” “By the Devil’s tail… what is it that doesn’t add up?” “The question he asked me: a question quite out of place, out of time. And besides that, his tone of voice… why are you so interested in this particular mosaic, among all the beautiful things there are in this church?” “But, Giordano… you, you who never turn your eyes up to the heavens, you who are an atheist, a mathematician and a villain, you who have the artistic sensibility of an ass: why did you stop so long to look at that blessed mosaic?” At the sound of his complaining tone, I burst out laughing. “It’s a long story, old man… a long story.” And with the back of my hand I wiped away tears of joy from my eyes. Then, even the light of the moon stopped shining in through the tiny window.

27 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters

Chapter II

Sleep didn’t last long: from the poplars and the chestnut-trees not a single merciful breath of wind blew any more. I raised my arms, enfolding my hands under the back of my neck: the straw crackled inside the mattress, Jerome snored as he turned over; I took refuge in staring at the handful of stars framed by the little window. My throat parched, I couldn’t swallow. A seemingly confused thought was meandering, tentatively but recurrently, through I don’t know what pathways of my mind… and always ended up taking me back there, in the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli. I’d been there not long after Easter, to be sure, and that prelate had wrinkled his forehead and had fixed those black, enquiring eyes on me, seeing me so taken with the image of St Sebastian… But that wasn’t the first time that I stopped and stood there in front of it: it had already happened six years before. I was only a boy, and it was the middle of winter, a very cold winter. After a day spent delivering rolls of parchment to Aquae Salviae and Santa Maria in Cosmedin, I’d gone into S. Pietro in Vincoli to have a rest. The same priest (one doesn’t forget black eyes like those so easily!) had come up to me more than once, looking hard at my face, just while I stood there stock-still in front of that image. And that evening the old man and I – each of us tightly wrapped up in two cloaks – were huddled close to the fire-place, praying God to make the long that was burning there last till dawn. Jerome was reading a most boring philosophical treatise, extracted from God knows what nook or cranny of the Saracen tower: he’d tried repeatedly to interest me in it, interrupting his customary muttering and doing everything to distract me from My Little Abacus that I was trying to write, though without success. Those sublime thoughts bored me to death, while I was eaten up with a feverish enthusiasm for the little book of arithmetic that I was putting together in those days, exploiting the idea of the revolutionary nine Indian numbers with the zero! And it was Jerome who had copied those figures for me, from a book: a small page written in Greek, that the old man had translated specially to assuage my hunger for numeration. I was shivering with cold, I must have been feverish, the ink was almost turning to ice on the tip of my pen as I traced my weird, luminous figures… when Jerome suddenly began snorting with irritation, tearing pages out of the book that he had in his hands and throwing them towards the burning log. He

28 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters succeeded in distracting me from my numbers: he was cursing those wretches who had dared to defile such elevated pages… with stupid historical notes! I don’t know how many he finally tore apart: some of them ended up by really reviving the flames of the log, which were beginning to die down, others rained down on me… and I, before consigning them to the fire, gave them a quick glance: many of the words were rubbed away and it was almost impossible to get names and events in any sort of order… the year 662, Kibossa, Armenia, Shirak, Aser, the Byzantine emperor Constans II, Eznik, Ananias ben Shirak, David… then another story within the story… Aryabhata, Paulisa, Keys of knowledge, Brahmagupta, the Paulicians, a religious sect… and the further fragments of a story within another story… Aristarchus of Samos, a new theory of the movement of the planets…! and there was some reference to a most ingenious machine… and then on to Ts’ai Lun, in fact to China… I tried to grab the book from the old man’s hands… but I only succeeded in infuriating him: he struck out at me with his belt, he missed me, I seized hold of the bronze buckle with its gold designs… and seeing him shaking with the cold and with his face contorted, I burst out laughing. And crying with laughter, I infected him too… tearing him away from his reading; finally he decided to satisfy me: but however much I paged through it, from the holy text there came forth no further hint of anything foreign to philosophy. Jerome took up his reading again, I went back to my writing. I had a fever on me, I was shaking, every now and then I stopped short with my pen quivering in the air, my head resting against the great chest that we’d arranged behind us, my gaze lost in the dying glow of the embers… And the black eyes of San Pietro in Vincoli reappeared to my mind. At some moment I must have fallen asleep… and My Little Abacus merged with Jerome’s eternal dissertations, with the fragments of that book of philosophy. It was a vividly clear dream: my longing for a little warmth must have been so strong, that my mind set the scene in midsummer… in the summer of the year 662!

The air was very fresh: the distant mountains were cut out sharply against the clear blue of the sky. Ananias turned his gaze the other way, towards the mountains whose peaks were redly edged with fire, behind which the sun was disappearing. But was it really the burning star that hid behind those heights? He brushed aside those thoughts, so as not to cloud the joy that filled his heart at the sight of the sunset… and those of his country were real masterpieces of Nature. He stood leaning against the low wall that surrounded the farm-house, enjoying all the subtle shades of colour in the sky, when he began to make out the

29 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters horse… and then the rider. Soon after that, the young man with curly hair and a proud bearing leapt from the back of the thoroughbred and ran to embrace the old man. “Ananias, maestro: you’re looking so young, as always!” “Aser, my son, you used never to lie: I’m getting old… and it’s right that this should be so, because nature must follow its course.” The young man’s face lost a little of its cheerfulness: “Yes, maestro, but it’s not right that stupid and wicked men should allow themselves to persecute Ananias of Shirak as if he were a subversive renegade!” “I see the news has even reached you, my dear Aser. Tell me, where have you just come from?” “From Kibossa, maestro. Perhaps you know what we’re doing… But tell me – tell me about yourself, and my fellow-pupils.” The old man ran one hand over his long, smooth white hair, put his arm round the young one’s shoulders and invited him to come in. In silence they shared a fish washed down with a jugful of buttermilk. When they’d finished it, Ananias apologised to the young man because “not only was the trout so small, but certainly not so tasty as those of Lake Gökcia…” Then he began telling him about his fellow-students and friends, trying to fill in the years that he’d been away. “My dear Aser, now would you like to explain your doctrines to me? Who are the Paulicians, my son? You’ve only just started up, yet already someone’s talking of suppressing your community…” A slight frown passed across the sharp yet open face of the young man, and his blue eyes sparkled with a friendly irritation: “Don’t call us that, master: that’s the nickname that our enemies have attached to us, while we calla ourselves Christians, simply. As for our doctrines, we follow the teaching of Paul and believe that there is not one sole God, but two supreme beings: the God of justice of the Jews, and the God of love of the Christians. The God of Evil – who is the Lord of this world – and the God of Good who sent an angel – Jesus Christ – to earth to teach us to love spiritual reality and repudiate the material world. We don’t accept the Old testament, but follow the New. We abstain from the sacraments and refuse to venerate the Cross or sacred images. We mean to be an indication of a purer Christianity: to this end we deny the teaching of the letters of Peter, that symbolise an ecclesiastical hierarchy. We are against the clergy and monasticism… against their corruption! It’s in that spirit that we want to found a new Church.” The young man fell silent, looking anxiously at Ananias; who gently and without pause replied: “My son… perhaps it’s right that this should have happened, and precisely to one of my best pupils! Perhaps it’s a lesson to your

30 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters teacher… who’s always inclined to subordinate divinity to nature, the things of the soul to science. You know that I firmly believe in a divine origin of everything that exists… while still holding to my own particular philosophy: I think our first task is to examine the created world and the laws that govern it. And the same spirit of research possessed you too, until not long ago! Well, I don’t want to say anything either for against your new community. But your teacher – as well as living for science – is also a citizen… a citizen of Armenia: we can’t escape this national origin of ours.” All this with a grave voice and penetrating glance. “What do you mean, Ananias?” “Has your community no other motives and aims, beyond the eternal struggle between Good and Evil? Aser, our country has never been able to enjoy even a short period of peace. When we lived under the hard yoke of the cruel Assyrians, our proud ancestors were always trying to free themselves. For more than a thousand years we were under the domination of the Persians and the Parthians. I was born under that second domination, I’ve lived under the rule of Byzantium, and now the Arabs are here: our poor country has been nothing but a battle-ground. Our people have never tasted even a little freedom. Our forefathers have had almost always to speak the language of their conquerors: latin, syriac, greek. Now at last we have an alphabet of our own… a language of our own that makes us feel like a people… and feel perhaps still more oppressed. It’s only human that your young heart should harbour feelings like the love of and the longing for freedom: that’s what I was meaning to say, my dear Aser.” The young man smiled slightly: “Yes, Ananias, you’re right: I’m tied to my community partly by a profound attachment to our country. And all my brothers, although they don’t even know the word hatred, feel some resentment all the same against the Arabs and the Byzantines.” His voice was clear and vibrant. “Just as you want to liberate the soul from the slavery of the body, so you also want to liberate your people from oppression by their invaders… Not so?” Aser didn’t reply, but his open face was transparent. “My son, listen to me carefully. From the sole fact that you’re opposing the corruption of the clergy and the monks, you’re destined to be severely repressed. If you add to that, that as well as depravity and Evil, your community is opposing the invader too… my poor Aser, you’re all inevitably destined to be exterminated. That’s enough, my friend… enough! Our forefathers have shed enough blood. Millennia have gone by: it’s time to put an end to patriotism. And surely it’s not we two who’ll allow our Armenian

31 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters hearts to overrule our minds and our intelligence. Because you, like me – like teacher, like pupil – are aware that we’re not like other people: we’ve a great deal of knowledge… but also of respect for our fellows. And Christ’s word and his love were for all men, not only for those of his own country. In our poor country only a few people know how to read or write, hardly anyone knows any science… science, whose only votaries are you, Eznik, David and myself. We have to look to the future of the world. Because for as long as the Earth is wrapped in the darkness of ignorance… well, our people – together with all the other races – will continue to be oppressed by those few men who hold the keys of knowledge. For which reason, it’s your duty as a Christian to make your knowledge available to your people, Aser: someone who loves one, I don’t believe he really loves any of them.” The young man’s face betrayed an intense inner struggle. Ananias went on: “Think how things would have turned out if those few men who were the holders of knowledge and power had devoted their lives to the diffusion of knowledge: we should have had civilised peoples. Peoples who wouldn’t have accepted the idea of enslaving others for the sake of an ideology, or a flag. Instead, they’ve constantly done that… because an uneducated people is like a flock of very peculiar sheep. A flock that on hearing its master’s voice can change into a pack of hungry wolves, forgetting its own nature. I’m deeply convinced of this: I’ve searched through human history, I’ve managed to read the books of Ahmes, the clay tablets of Mesopotamia, I’ve studied the history of Egypt, of Babylonia, of India… and finally I’ve studied them, the great ones, the people who might have changed mankind! The Greeks! They began by writing horizontally from left to right… thus making reading easier, and writing too, guessing – owing to laws still unknown – that was the best way for the eye to look into the mind. And then they never stopped. They had already made the greatest discovery in human history: the power of reason! Thales, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Aristarchus, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Hypatia! They had laid the groundwork for transforming the world. In a few centuries they sowed the seeds of so much knowledge that it would have been enough to carry on with their work, to produce a different, a better, probably a free civilization. Unfortunately there came the Romans. Then came Christianity, whose official representatives inexorable halted the progress of science, burning the library of Alexandria and murdering Hypatia. That was something that Christ had neither foreseen, nor preached, nor would have wanted. Nonetheless, it happened. And a hundred years ago Justinian – the emperor of the East – being frightened of Greek science, seeing it as a threat to himself and to Christian orthodoxy, put an end to it by closing down the Paltonic Academy of Athens. Its members were scattered.

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Thus the year 529 marked the end of an era. They had halted the march of knowledge… above all that of the mother of all the sciences, mathematics! But infinite are the ways of the Lord. Though the Athenian academy was dispersed, there were born Philipon, Aryabhata, Paulisa, Eutochius, Simplicius, Boethius, Brahmagupta… and your teacher Ananias of Shirak, and many others; we were trying to hand on the knowledge of the Greeks: while we were intent on this work of continuation, twentythree years ago the Arabs conquered Egypt, and it seems that Omar got rid of whatever papyri had escaped the firing of the library of Alexandria by the Romans and the Christians…” Ananias seemed tired. His gaze wandered into the glowing violet of the sky beyond the little window, or was lost in following the flight of the bats as they frantically danced in their hunt after insects. Then his eyes turned back to Aser’s face: “A life devoted to the study of mathematics, of astronomy, of history and geography: and yet I’m looked on with suspicion. I expound new ideas… and they see me as a subversive, I’m persecuted by the clergy and the law. By my suggestion that there might be the possibility that the Earth moves, I’ve risked being put in prison. What nonsense, Aser! It’s true that the world, and civilization, were born in the East, in the Indies, in Asia Minor, in Hellas, in Alexandria… but now that’s really all over. The time has come for Europe too to begin the journey towards knowledge, to emerge from its condition of barbarism.” In the young man’s searching eyes, a watchful but attentive look. “Aser, one can’t predict what part the Arabs will play in the history of mankind: at the moment they’re simply conquering countries. But the words of Omar, who’s consigned tens of thousands of manuscripts to the flames, leave one very little hope: ‘Either the books are full of what’s already written in the Koran, in which case we don’t need to read them; or else of the opposite of what’s in the Koran, in which case we ought not to read them.’ Here, in the East, it’s really all over. What we can and must do, is carry the keys of knowledge to Europe.” “Do you mean to say…?” The young man spoke in the tone of someone who’s already embraced a new faith. “Imagine, Aser: suppose the peoples of the whole world were educated, that everyone knew at least how to read and write… and that in every house there were a few books!” “Ananias… what’s the point of dreaming?” With a new light in his eyes, the maestro took him by the arm: “Aser… it could be, I tell you! What’s been, up to now, the greatest obstacle to the diffusion and the progress of knowledge? The technique of producing a

33 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters manuscript, the high price of parchment and the difficulty of getting hold of it. Aser, we still write by hand, after centuries and centuries of scientific knowledge! To write just one work, you need at least one person… and a great deal of time. Think of being able to write not on costly parchment, but on something easy to produce… and suppose you don’t have to do it yourself, but a machine able to write – at one single stroke! – a whole page. And that in one day it’s able to produce, not just one work… but many, many books!” “It would turn things upside-down, maestro: the greatest revolution of all time! But the priests and the kings and the emperors of this world would throw not just that machine, but the man who used it with it, on the bonfire.” “That’s why we have to act with great caution.” Aser was open-mouthed: “Maestro… but you’re talking as if this machine really existed… you’re making a fool of me, aren’t you?” “No! No! The machine hasn’t yet been made… but the system is a very good one! It’s Armenia that’s not the most suitable place! Still less so in these times…” Ananias waited for his pupil to recover from his bewilderment. Then he took down a dark leather bag from the wall, and put it into the young man’s hands; who – before opening it – was struck by the bronze fastening: on the dark metal there shone some gold designs… a series of incised triangles, some with some horizontal lines through them, others with a single vertical one. He opened it, and took out the contents of the bag: two bound manuscripts. He leafed through the first one, read one or two bits of it… but when he looked up, his expression was more puzzled than ever. “Don’t be surprised, Aser… it’s not a joke. It’s a collection of letters of various kinds – love-letters, letters from the country, moral reflections – of very slight literary or philosophical value: they were given to me by the author, Theophilactus Simocactus, who had been a prefect and a secretary to the emperor. We met each other years ago in Byzantium. We had many conversations and exchanged a good deal of knowledge… particularly about history and geography. He was writing a history of the reign of Maurice, and I my book of geography. He was so pleased with the mass of information that I left him, that he wanted to make me a present of these letters of his. But look, this is the trick: someone leafing through this manuscript, will hardly notice that here… yes, towards the end, there are bound in some pages whose content shouldn’t be entirely news to you: remember Aristarchus?” Aser turned the last pages of the book one by one… and at last raised his eyes, amazed: “Aristarchus of Samos… nearly a thousand years ago: the new theory of planetary motion!”

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“Yes, my son, there’s his whole theory; but confirmed by a series of calculations, and amplified with a commentary by a follower of Aryabhata: these are ideas that could change the world, and which one man dared to propound nearly a millennium ago, but which were not much credited by the astronomers of the School of Alexandria…” Ananias then invited the young man to take the other manuscript and open it. “But it’s a palimpsest… it’s the Old Testament.” “Yes, Aser: from the first book of kings to the second of Chronicles… one of the so many examples of Christian vandalism, even though in this case they haven’t rubbed out a great work, but only a few comedies of Titus Maccius Plautus. Well, in this case too – and in the same way as with the other book – I’ve added some pages in the middle and at the end: look…” He took the book from the young man’s hands: “Here it is, here’s the gist of how – five centuries ago – in China, Ts’ai Lun, using fishing nets, hemp fibres and tree-bark, made the new writing-material… paper! Nowadays this substance is used tremendously all over China. Look: there’s a full description of the various stages of its preparation, of the paste that it’s made of, of its refinement, of how to shape the leaf. I’ve made a very small quantity of it myself. Then… then the little secret that will revolutionise mathematics… and with it, all the sciences: the new system of numeration… the Indian system! Look: ten… ten numbers! 1,2,3,.4,5,6,7,8,9…and finally this one, 0! the great little zero! So, a different symbol for each number, then a positional notation, and finally a decimal basis. For the first time, three principles put together. What do you think of it? Look at these examples…” Aser examined the manuscript attentively: he looked up, and his eyes shone: “What genius… what a brilliant simple idea! How did we manage not to think of it until now?” “You’ve said it, my son: brilliant in its simplicity! And only the Indians could manage to invent it. Two years ago I was in Syria, and there I got to know Severus Sebokt. Think of it- a bishop. But very fond of his country, and also a bit resentful of the Greek philosophers who had emigrated there after the closure of the schools of Athens. And it was just this resentment that made him say that there were other peoples – apart from the Hellenes – who had some scientific knowledge. From him, and from a pupil of the Indian Brahmagupta, I’ve learnt everything that’s written in these pages: the negative numbers, the zero, the quadratic equations…and this table of sines and cosines that’ll be very useful in astronomy. It’s from that same pupil of Brahmagupta – who’d just been on a journey to China – that I’ve learned this…”, and he leafed through the manuscript, in which – a little after half-

35 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters way through it – there were some pages with writing and drawings on them: “I’ve preferred to write these notes myself, using Greek letters. Here, d’you see? This is the type-setting frame… and these are a few examples of moveable letters. D’you understand, Aser? “Yes, Ananias, but I’m afraid the actual realisation of it will be very difficult… But still, it’s a brilliant idea! Brilliant…” The young man was really excited – his voice full of feeling, his eyes shining: “Maestro, once it’s realised, this machine could really change the world…” “This machine will change the world, Aser! It’s our task to make that happen as soon as possible. India and China follow paths and destinies too remote from us and from the western world. The Chinese can’t seem to understand the enormous value of their inventions. And for the Indians, mathematics is like poetry: Brahmagupta distinguishes unknown quantities by different colours… my son, we owe these brilliant intuitions and discoveries to the genius of the East, but it’s for us to project them where the story of mankind will go on: in Europe.” “How can you be so sure of that?” “It can’t but be like that: apart from the military conquests of the Romans, in the field of science and of culture Europe has always stood and watched what was happening in the East and in Alexandria in Egypt. It’s time for her too to contribute to the progress of civilisation. It’s her turn. By a historical process. It’s our task to transmit at least the keys of knowledge to her.” He shut both the books and looked hard at the young man: “Aser, as for me, I no longer enjoy even a semblance of freedom in this country. My ideas sounded revolutionary ever since the egg-age…” And he smiled as his pupil took up the tale for him… “It seems that the Earth is shaped like an egg: as in that spherical form, the yolk is in the centre, the white around that, and the shell surrounds it all, so the Earth in the centre is like the yolk, the air around it like the white, and the sky colours and covers it all like the shell…” The old man’s round face lit up with tenderness: “You still remember my exact words, my son… But d’you remember how people regarded us, too? Us, those subversive fellows who wanted to roll up this nice flat earth into a ball! Imagine, now that I’ve dared to talk about the rotation of the earth, hinting – if only vaguely – at Aristarchus’ theory! Yes, perhaps I’ve been imprudent… but how many more millennia have got to go by? And he looked long and hard at the young man. “You want me, then… me, to take these ideas to the West?” “Yes, Aser. that’s what I want… and that’s what I expect of you. You’re young: to travel, to enlarge your experience, will be good for you. Apart from

36 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters that, I only ask you to take this bag. To wait for whoever you think is the right person… and to consign these keys to him. I’ve entrusted the same project to David and to Eznik. They’ll take other routes, they’ll reach other countries of the West. But you’ll succeed… I’m sure of it: this will be our country’s contribution to the future of human civilisation.” “Maestro, seeing that you’ve foreseen it all, you already know that I’ll set off with this bag. Where shall I go?” “First of all, to Rome. In the entourage of Pope Vitaliano, there’s a prelate, his trusted right-hand man, who’s very learned and fond of the sciences. You’ll find it hard to believe, but that’s how it is: even among them there are men with a very broad-minded outlook on life.” He grasped the other’s shoulder, warmly: “I’ve been at Byzantium, I’ve talked to the emperor Constans II: he’s about to set off for Rome, dreaming of taking the capital of the empire back there. He needs a young man whom he can trust, who’s highly educated and who knows many languages. You’ll join his entourage, you’ll be his right-hand man. He’s a decent master… you’ll understand what I mean, you’ll see.” Ananias poured what remained of the buttermilk in the jug into the two glasses. They drank it, looking deeply into one another’s eyes. Then they embraced one another. “It’s a clear night, Ananias, and there’s the moon: I’ld rather leave at once. Don’t risk yourself too much.” “Goodbye, Aser. Be very careful yourself, too: and may your heart be able to recognise loyalty and sincerity, when you meet them.” The young man put the two manuscripts into the dark leather bag, and fastened it with the bronze buckle inlaid with designs in gold.

Ananias was right: Constans II and Aser understood each other at once. The emperor was despotic and overbearing with everyone… but for Aser he had felt an immediate liking. He was tired of being surrounded by fools, by ignorant, servile or treacherous people. He was sick of the priests… but especially of the monks. “Do you know how many there are at Byzantium alone? Ten or fifteen thousands! Fifteen thousands monks who do no work, who corrupt everything and everyone, who persuade the people to believe that a piece of rotten wood – picked up who knows where – is the Cross of Christ… and lots of pearls and precious stones are required, to adorn it! That a skull found in a drain is that of St Peter’s dog, and that too needs pearls and precious stones, so that it’ll ward off the plague from the city! That a hoof of the she- ass on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem should be rubbed on the belly of women who can’t have children… and lo!, a miracle: after nine months a child

37 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters is born. But it has to be they who rub the hoof on her, at length and alone with the woman. And always stirring up quarrels, getting drunk, getting into other people’s beds… including those of the palace. They’ve rubbed the hoof on a good many court ladies, and empresses too. And as if that wasn’t enough, they’ve managed to ruin the priesthood as well, creating an atmosphere of conflict, conspiracies, quarrels and depravity. So, keep an eye on the Chalcedonians who affirm the human and divine nature of Christ, and try to keep the Severian Monophysites happy, who disagree with them… Monoenergism and Monothelism, the Word Incarnate yes and the Word Incarnate no, the imminent danger of falling into Nestorianism, the doctrine of the Single Will and the Hypostatic Energy of the Nestorian Monophysites… One energy, Two energies. Word this and Word that… Sergius, Sophronius, Honorius I, Severinus, John IV, Theodore I… Stop! I tried – by promulgating my decree Typos – to put an end to this story of the two Wills of Christ… with the result that the priests of your country have condemned the decree, Pope Martin has got angry and the patriarch excommunicated me. I try to get him assassinated, but at Rome they get wind of my plans and make up a fine story about it all, embellished with a miracle. But the second time I succeeded … in having him arrested and confined in the Chersonese, where he’s died of hunger. Now they’re accusing me of not having left him with a decent cook… My brave Armenian friend… what a dog’s life it is being emperor! By now I’m tired of it, I hate this people and they return the compliment. And I’m afraid of the Arabs, that’s true as well. So it’s time to leave the East. We’ll go, Aser… we’ll go, and re-establish the capital in its right place. We’ll go back and restore the great empire of the West. It’ll need the strength of youth, and capable men. Above all, men who don’t have much sympathy for monks and priests. Men like ourselves!”

That day Aser had been to Aquae Salviae to pray at the site of the martyrdom of St Paul. He’d stayed to talk a bit with some Armenisn monks. The month of July was coming to an end, in the year 663: it was the 22nd day of the month. The heat in Rome was oppressive. From the vents of the sewers there issued a horrible fetid odour; huge rats came and went in and out of them, unmolested. In Armenia, too, it was hot in summer, but it was a different, dry heat. The emperor had left for Sicily a few days before, and Aser was to join him there, soon. His time in Rome was already over – without anything having happened. He was sitting on the steps of San Pietro Apostolo in Vincoli, on the Monte Oppio, waiting for the learned Roman prelate to arrive. He was going back in thought over his journey there. To the mists of Byzantium. To

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Taranto, where they had landed. Then there had been the siege of Benevento. And there had occurred something that had deeply unsettled him. While the blockade of the city was going on, Constans II – at the approach of King Grimoald – had sent a delegation to the enemy lines, to establish a truce with Duke Romuald. Aser had joined the imperial negotiators: while the Byzantine envoys were holding their discussions, his eyes met those of the man seated beside the duke… Count Trasmond of Capua. He had never seen such eyes: green, cold, inhuman. Eyes which met your gaze without ever a hint of moving away, of shielding themselves behind their lids. Thin, dry lips. He felt himself invaded by a strange uneasiness: he tried to sustain the other’s gaze, but without success. He had to give in: the cold eyes went on looking fixedly at him, without feeling, without a sign of life. Then the arrival of King Grimoald, the defeat of the Byzantine emperor, the flight from the battle-field. Finally, Rome. The grandiloquent ceremonial greetings of the Senate and the Roman people. The sumptuous banquet with Pope Vitalianus in the Lateran oratory. Constans II despoiling the city of its statues and of the gilded tiles that covered the roof of the dome of the Pantheon. Constans II trying to earn forgiveness for his pillaging by offering donations to the churches, in return… and the most important of them was that mosaic of Saint Sebastian in the church of San Pietro Apostolo in Vincoli. He remembered how the emperor had laughed, on the journey to Rome, when he talked about that mosaic: “Think of it, Aser… it’ll stay there for centuries into the future, as a typical work of Byzantine art! And probably noone will imagine that it was actually made by a Roman.” Aser couldn’t stop comparing the material and intellectual poverty of Rome with the remembered splendour of Byzantium… and thinking of Ananias. This was the Western world, that was to inherit the learning of the East? As the days went by, doubts assailed him.

“Disillusion and doubt are stamped all over your face, brother Aser… You had had high hopes of this journey, hadn’t you?” Aser hadn’t been aware of the man’s approach, absorbed as he was in his own thoughts. He rose to his feet, and greeted him like a brother: “Yes, my dear friend, I can’t hide the fact. But I’ve had the luck to get to know Rome… and you: and that alone repays me for everything,” The black eyes of the new arrival took on a smiling expression: “Brother Aser, you have a great mind, and a great heart: and thank you. But my mind is free, and my soul free, from pride… and I can recognise my own limitations. My learning is only rudimentary: yours is something like genius. I’ld have been happy if I could at

39 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters least have shown you some precious manuscripts, but – as you’ve seen – our library is a very wretched affair. At Montecassino you’ve been able to see for yourself that the books are objects of luxury, with beautiful bindings and beautiful pages to look at… but that there’s very little learning in them. That’s what the great Roman Empire has left us: ruins, ignorance and misery. But… would you like to show me how they’ve set up the votive icon of St Sebastian?” They went inside, and stopped to look at the mosaic. The oppressive summer heat couldn’t penetrate the interior of the church: it was cool in there. Aser felt cold shivers run through him: he felt himself possessed by a strange uneasiness… like that which he’d known at Benevento, in front of those green eyes.

The sight of the lake of Nemi made up, to Aser, for all the fatigue and the heat of the journey there. The violent light of the sun made the clearest and most brilliant reflections on its blue mirror. They’d already been to the mouth of the outlet that leads to the valley of Aricia; now they were making their way towards the castle. Every now and then they stopped to look at the heaps of volcanic debris and red rock, the lava ridges of sasso albano, of flint and pumice-stone. They were talking about the hail of stones from the volcano, and about the fact that, already in the time of Livy, it was long extinct. “Brother Aser, I’ld like now to show you the place where one can hear these subterranean explosions. People have also seen unexpected sudden pillars of fire. If it happened somewhere else, I’ld think it merely odd… but here, where there was once a volcano, you can understand, it’s different. You were telling me that in your own country you’ve happened to witness a similar phenomenon, and to discover its cause. You’ll thus be able to make at least a rough comparison…” “We’re certainly dealing with the same phenomenon…” replied Aser, as the shadow of doubt that had clouded his sharp features now disappeared, “… and it’s not by chance that it appears in the summer, and just when the heat is most intense. There’s no doubt that there are gases and sulphurous particles from underground that catch fire, to produce the explosions that you’ve heard. And it’s not surprising that they happen more often in the day- time than in the night, when the air is cooler.” They came to a patch of uncultivated ground: beside a cherry-tree, there was a narrow hole into the ground. “D’you feel like letting yourself down, brother Aser, into this cave?” “Certainly, my friend: in the worst of cases, it’ll turn out to be the Devil’s residence… and that’ll mean we’ll finally see what he really looks like!”

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“Would you like to give me your bag, so as to be able to move more freely?” the priest asked the young man. “No, thank you…” And as if to reassure himself, he pressed the bronze buckle tightly with his fingers: then he began to lower himself into the narrow hole. Then the sky went dark, everything became filthy black The night cleared: the sharp sunlight flashed suddenly: a gap in the clouds… no, a hole in the ground. A piercing pain in the head, the warmth of blood that was trickling down behind one ear, over one cheek. Aser regained consciousness: he was half-buried among dry leaves, branches and brushwood: his hands were tied behind his back, his feet tightly bound too, his hands and feet tied together. He was seized by spasms of nausea, the smell of sulphur was suffocating him. The man appeared in the opening above: his face had lost all trace of friendliness and kindness: two black eyes, as cold as ice, were looking at Aser: “Now you really are going to see the face of Satan.” The voice too was different: cold, without intonation. He showed the young man the two manuscripts: “Ingenious… I must admit. At first glance I was disappointed… but there had to be something precious there, it couldn’t be otherwise. You hadn’t let go of them for a moment. I’ve still got to examine them thoroughly, but I’ve already seen enough: brilliant ideas and inventions… too brilliant. I owe you at least an explanation.” He swallowed, his lips parted in a sort of sneer: “You wanted to divide, to separate, to break up worldly power… giving it to the people: that’s revolution… and you’ll die as a revolutionary hero. Pope Gregory the Great was saddened by how far Rome had been brought low, that had once been the lair of the young lions who went out from there to conquer the world. And he had reason to be so. And it was in order not to lose hold of its dying empire that Rome took hold of the ship of Peter… and together we were constrained to set fire to the Library and the School of Alexandria… Saint Augustine said these very words: ‘If the pagan philosophers have by chance spoken truths that are of value to our faith – especially the Platonists – not only need we not be afraid of these truths, but we must seize them from those their illegitimate owners.’ D’you understand, now? Rome will again become the lair of young lions who’ll go out to conquer the world. But they won’t be pagan legions, but Christian priests and bishops. One must watch out, because the chiefs of our Church don’t always keep their minds fixed on that objective: one of those is the good Vitalianus. But never fear, they’ll be few… and at their side there’ll always be trustworthy men like me, who won’t lose sight of the final goal. Our court will be the most splendid in the world, and we’ll never again have to beg some other god’s place of worship in which to glorify the greatness of God

41 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters and of His Church… as we’ve had to do with the Pantheon. We were forced to transform a pagan temple, and then to keep quiet, and to applaud your emperor while he plundered its roof.” He stretched out his hands, fixed his cold stare on Aser’s blood-spattered face: “Symbolically, I now take these manuscripts, as a sacred act, in the same way as the Hebrews carried away out of Egypt vessels of silver and of gold, jewelled vessels with which they adorned their Tabernacle. There you are, the fire which will burn your body will wipe out the world of research, of knowledge, of creative doubt, of protest, of rebellion, of revolution. It’ll be the triumph of one sole God: my God! The God of Rome will conquer the world. For this to happen, the minds of men must be purified, liberated, made ready to entertain only our angels, our demons, our hopes: those that we will show them. Man should not think: he should follow the flock. The world will become an immense, docile flock of Christian souls whom we – the priests, the depositories of the truth and of the divine Word! – will lead to eternal salvation.” His eyes dilated, he fixed on Aser a pitiless gaze: “So: it’s for this that you have to be sacrificed, because noone must disturb this splendid people… this docile flock who work to the sound of our bells. You must be sacrificed because you’ve chosen Evil: you’ve exercised your own will, you’ve taken decisions without letting yourself be guided by the Church, and thus by God Himself. Your emperor immolated my pope Martin in the Crimean Chersonese. He chose the right place: it was there that Diana was honoured with the blood of strangers who landed in that country. You know where we are at this moment… don’t you, Aser? Above the remains of the temple of Diana. As then, today too the stranger has lost the duel with the priest: I take possession of these works of pagan learning, of the sacred wood, of the kingdom. And never fear: we’ll take care of your emperor too. Aser… the duel between us was not fought on equal terms, but it could not have been otherwise: the victor had been decided from the beginning. And so it will be – in saecula saeculorum. The knowledge and the power contained in these books will never be victorious, with us.” It wasn’t only the thought of the failure of his enterprise, nor of his own imminent death, that filled Aser’s soul with terror: it was also the dry and icy tone of that man’s voice. It was above all the coldness of his eyes. The last thing that he saw was the bronze buckle with the gold designs on it. The man flung fire into the hole: violent flames leapt from the leaves and the dry wood, and set fire to the sulphur. Then they engulfed the young man’s body.

The flames were killing me, there was no way to put an end to that torture: desperate screams were burning in my throat. Into that monstrous

42 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters inferno, amidst the horror of the flesh that was being burned alive, a piercing lament began to penetrate: “Giordano… Giordano…” Desperation and torment flared up: they were calling someone else! “Giordano…!” Giordano…!” The flames seemed to waver, a little light penetrated my darkness: the deeply lined face of an old man, two hands shaking me, a voice that went on calling Giordano… At last the tongues of fire faded from my mind. “Hell… What’s happening, old man?” A contorted face, terror-struck eyes: “God be praised! It took some such help to drag you out of that nightmare: but what the devil were you dreaming? I was always afraid that numbers were going to drive you mad… and now that’s coming true!” I pulled myself up a bit, in the hearth there were only ashes, it was cold again… but I was covered in sweat, and panting, terrified. Through the window there filtered the first pale gleams of dawn. I was so glad not to have ended up roasted alive… that I told nothing about it to the old man. Jerome went out into the snow, and came back with a good big log and some twigs: he relit the fire and began heating a small saucepan of red wine.

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Chapter III

My arms had gone to sleep; I pulled my hands out from under the back of my neck, making the straw rustle inside the mattress; this time Jerome stopped snoring and turned towards me: the summer dawn, which was beginning to colour even the inside of the hut, showed a strangely clear face, free of any trace of shadow. “Old man, now at last I can tell you: the mosaic of St Sebastian wasn’t donated in 1071, nor during the great plague of 600, nor even that of 680.” Jerome looked at me, baffled. “Old man, the image was donated to Pope Vitalianus by the Byzantine emperor Constans II during his visit to Rome: it was probably set up in the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli by a young Armenian called Aser, a pupil of the great Armenian mathematician Ananias of Shirak.” Now Jerome looked at me with concern; then his rugged features opened in a smile: “And perhaps you’re able to tell me the day, the month and the year, too, in which there took place this event that changed the course of history…” “Towards the end of July, the 22nd or a bit after that, of the year 663.” As I mentioned this date, I felt a bit disconcerted. The old man too must have noticed the coincidence: “That’s to say…” I didn’t make him go on: “Yesterday was the 24th of July… but allowing for the correction to the calendar of Albathenius, it was the 22nd … the 22nd of July of five centuries ago…” On the gaunt face, a mocking expression: “In these last months, you’ve been leading a hellish life: the castle, the farming, the parchment-skins to prepare… and your studies: mathematics, and now physics and mechanics too! You’ve been driving yourself too hard, my son.” “No, that’s all got nothing to do with it: nothing…” and I kept on nervously thumping the mattress with a trembling hand, “and I can’t even explain to myself why I haven’t told you about my dream… but I think the time has come to tell it you. D’you remember that night so many years ago… that winter evening when you tore out those irrelevant pages from that philosophical treatise?” He gave a dry grunt: “Probably the one when you got the brilliant idea of swapping a mathematical treatise… for a brazier?”

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“That very one, old man. But now listen… and try to keep that big mouth shut.” And I told him – in rough outline – about that brightly clear delirium of so many years ago. At the end of the story, only in his eyes could I see some crack appear in the superior derision printed all over his face: “You’ve actually invented men of science: Ananias of Shirak, an Armenian! Poor Armenia…” and he opened his eyes absurdly wide, curling his lip and spitting towards the fireplace. The old man’s words had struck home. In fact almost all those names were unknown to me. It’s true I’d read them on those torn-out pages… but nowhere else had I ever heard of Ananias, Paulisa, Aryabhata and Brahmagupta! Jerome was right: perhaps their works had never reached the West? And yet… the colours… the sensations of that dream… the mountains of Armenia… the harbour of Byzantium… the manuscripts… “Old man, those notes you copied so many years ago, remember? The ones from which I learnt the new numbers, the nine figures and the zero… with which I began the book that I sold, later, to the Pisan: you’ve never been able to tell me what book you copied them from.” “I think it was one of the books kept in that cursed cupboard on the second floor of the Saracen tower, that’s all.” “What would you say of a palimpsest with the old Testament from the first book of Kings… to the second of Chronicles?” A sceptical expression clouded his wrinkled face: he shook his head – no. I felt myself defeated. Then I remembered: “Titus Maccius PLautus…” The old man’s eyes lit up: “Plautus… Yes, it was a book with many of Plautus’ comedies! But it wasn’t a palimpsest… absolutely not! That book that I had in my hands was relatively recently written: I remember the script, a very small, very clear carolingian hand… but it wasn’t a palimpsest, I promise you. Stuck in at the end… yes, they were stuck in at the end of the book.” “And how on earth, old man, were some notes about mathematics – revolutionary mathematics! – written in Greek, put in with some comedies by Plautus written in Latin?” His bloodshot eyes narrowed, then dilated: “Oh, I remember now that I wondered about that myself… but I’ve never had another chance to look into that cupboard, with its two locks. They keep it always shut, and it’s very strong. I’ve always thought it was because of those gold chalices and the precious reliquaries: while you… while that head of yours is buzzing with the idea that there… that in there are books so precious and so dangerous that they’re afraid to keep them in the library on the ground floor? You want to suggest that they don’t trust even us… although they think we can’t even read?”

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“Yes, old man… I’m beginning to think that’s how things really are.” Jerome ran his hands through his hair, and knitted his brows, adding yet more wrinkles to those already incised into his gaunt face: “You could be right: I’ve seen our lords the monks arranging dusting, rebinding them. But they’ve always done it all themselves. And only with those books stuck in that cupboard! All the other books in the library, they’ve trusted us to look after them, instead. One can’t deny it, that it’s odd…” We looked each other in the face, amazed. It was Jerome, at this point, who asked me to retell him my whole dream, over again: he said that he too now, wanted to see clearly the point of that remark. “What remark, old man?” “…why are you so interested in just that mosaic, among all the beautiful things in this church?” I began again from the beginning, this time without leaving out a single detail, from the sunset over the mountains of Armenia… to the young Aser being burned alive by the Roman prelate. “Old man, you know a lot of history: what happened to the emperor Constans II?” “From Rome he went to Syracuse, to set up his seat of government there, after seeing his dream of reforming the empire fade away. Five years later, again in the month of July, he was murdered while he was having a bath. They say, by his chamberlain – one Andrew, son of Troilus – with a hard blow on the head. They talk also of a conspiracy. Nothing is known for certain, because immediately afterwards that Andrew also disappeared.” I couldn’t expunge from my mind the icy stare of those cold green eyes that went on looking fixedly at Aser: “Old man, who was the count Trasmondo of Capua? Why was Aser so much afraid of him? What’s he got to do with all this story of death, and the Church, and the Popes?” “Evil spirit of Hell! Trasmondo… Trasmondo di Capua: in the year 663 he was granted the duchy of Spoleto by Grimuald, the king of the Lombards… in the very year that the events of your dream took place! Trasmondo count of Capua, the man with the cold green eyes, was the ancestral progenitor of Lothar Conti di Segni – son of Trasmondo Conti di Segni. Now, Pope Innocent III…” The sense of mystery began to give way to a feeling of oppression that wouldn’t leave me: “Old man, soon this Pope who is achieving the domination of the world will arrive here, at Nemi, at the Castle. I know it was only a dream… I know that we’re men of science… but it was, for all that, a vision that sprang from those fragmentary notes that you yourself had torn out of that book! And then… why has it all come back to me just today? Why

46 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters today… after so many years? Jerome, I’m even ashamed to say such things… but I feel really uneasy, you must believe me. I seem to feel that something… that someone has shown us a path to follow, a mission to accomplish: there, now I’ve told you, start laughing if you like.”

I finally fastened round my waist the old belt with the gold designs on its buckle. We embraced one another. “Giordano, I insist: no heroics! From now on your life may be even more precious… and if the devil should foul things up, reme4mber that the best escape route is along the outlet from the lake: nobody dares go that way. Goodbye, my son: now know that even your world of numbers needs the help of a benign Providence…” “Goodbye, Jerome. Whatever happens, thanks you. You’ve taught me many things – the most important ones. And if I don’t come back, then burn all my books… anyway, I’ve got them fixed in my brain. Goodbye, old man: I’m sure we’ll meet again somewhere.” “Certainly, my son: if not here, it’ll perhaps be in Hell… but somewhere or other, you’ll see, we’ll meet again! May god protect you. And try to hold your breath as long as possible: the stink of Lucifer is horrible to smell.” I came out of the hut just as the sun began to rise behind the sacred wood.

I was wiping the last grains of dust off the furniture in the round room, when Jerome’s cries rang out in the distance, calling for help: followed, shortly afterwards, by other cries. I ran hurriedly down from the tower, while the monks were already running out of the gate of the castle: just opposite, very high flames were bursting from one the huts: the old man had done a good job! I began helping the monks to extinguish them, and then took advantage of the general confusion to run back and up to the second floor of the Saracen tower. I had a hard job to shift the big cupboard full of books, behind which I hid myself: above the level of the floor – like a window – there was a large, blind hollow in the thickness of the wall; in its depths, a narrow crack through which there came a puff of breeze. I had to sweat to rearrange the cupboard in its usual position. I was forced to stand crouching: I must have looked like the statue of some saint in a too-small niche. The cupboard was missing its back panel in the upper part, and through some narrow cracks between the books, I was able to spy out almost all of the small room. Soon afterwards, the shouts and hubbub reaching me from below grew fainter, until they ceased.

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Only once did the thought of danger cross my mind: I suppressed it with a violent impulse: enough of worrying! By now it was time simply to act. I can’t remember how much time had passed. It was probably sometime between tierce and noon. My position was really uncomfortable… but at least the air was breathable: the tufa of which the Saracen tower was built was able to keep out almost all the stuffy heat of July. I recognised the deep bass voice of the abbot Raniero, then I heard the other two: one, powerful and cavernous… the other, not so loud but high and sharp. When they sat down they were almost directly in front of the piece of furniture behind which I was hidden. Enough light came into the room through the small window: they lit no candle. The cavernous voice belonged to a tall man, with a very strong physique and red hair, who gesticulated continually as he talked. His eyes moved sharply: he gave the impression of being a strong and passionate character, untroubled by doubts or uncertainties. At the left side of his mouth, a long scar… almost in the shape of a cross. He was the Vicar-General of the Cistercian Order: Arnauld- Amaury, abbot of Cîteaux. The high, sharp voice was that of Innocent III. Small in stature, his whole body emanated order and cleanliness. White hands, on one of which there shone the red jewel of a large ring; a long, sharp nose, large ears, thin red lips… and the eyes: pale… eyes that I had already met in a dream, eyes without feeling, cold. On the table at which they were sitting, a basket full of fruit. They were talking about their journey. Then Arnauld complimented abbot Raniero on the beauty of the place and on the freshness of the air one breathed at Nemi. He joked that he would have liked to change places with him, but abbot Raniero – with a scared expression on his puffy face and in his wide-eyed, watery glance – replied that he would be unworthy and incapable of overseeing six hundred abbeys. Meanwhile, the Pope was eating an orange. Then he asked Arnauld about the recent death of the papal legate Raoul. Arnauld gave a brief account of what had happened; then it was he who asked the Pope about life in Rome… and when the latter began to reply, I began to think that I had involved myself in a risky undertaking for nothing. “My dear Arnauld,” said the Pope, taking another orange, “the Roman people are the most awkward nation to deal with that we’ve ever known. After so many centuries, they still won’t resign themselves to the loss of their empire: they’re terribly lazy and vain, and sometimes proud. They do nothing but beg for panem et circenses…when bread alone should be enough for them… when there are only eight thousand of the really poor. Unfortunately, while the whole of Christendom is bending the knee in veneration to our humble

48 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters self as the Vicar of Christ on earth, they are constantly induced to follow men inimical to us… like that rebellious relative of our good abbot Raniero Capocci here, that Giovanni Capocci who’s busy damning his soul by insulting our person and saying that our words are of God while our works are of the Devil! But even this makes us think of the inscrutable designs of the Creator who has made one and the same plant bear a rotten and a good fruit… does it not, brother Raniero? Thus, while the one, eaten up with pride, fights against us, the other – besides humbly serving and advising us – also undertakes the heaviest of responsibilities, that of hearing the confession of the vicar of Him whose reign knows no frontiers.” He finished peeling the orange and began slowly to pick at it. “My trusty Arnauld, when the Roman people give us a bit peace, we are oppressed by a great quantity and variety of other matters. We have to think of remedies to prevent the decline of religion, from Iceland to the banks of the Euphrates, from Palestine to the kingdoms of Scandinavia; we have to send legates to make peace between contending parties, to expound our opinion about a thousand problems, to render justice to the oppressed, to provide for the needs of our churches and monasteries, never to forget that the Holy Land is not free, and therefore to provide support for the armies of the crusade. We are so burdened with business and so wrapped up in these affairs that sometimes we don’t believe we shall succeed in carrying out our task. We have hardly time to breathe, we are left only a few moments now and then to think of heavenly things. Our duty drives us to live for others, to give advice, assistance and judgement, to talk to peoples and to kings, to protect, to reconcile, to admonish and to punish… so that we are almost strangers to ourselves. In these corrupt times we are so overburdened with many tasks, that the fact of having your great Order at our side is a great consolation to us, and makes us hope that we may after all be able to discharge not unworthily our apostolic ministry for the triumphal glory of God, and for the defence and the enlargement of His kingdom.” He finished eating the orange: then, turning to the abbot Raniero, he asked him to describe his impressions of the heresy spreading through Provence, and particularly around Toulouse. “Holy Father, I already told you much about this at Viterbo, but I should like now to fill out my account, in the hope of bringing to this question some however unworthy contribution of my own. Your Holiness, I can assure you: to campaign against the Devil is an exhausting task, not only for the spirit, but for the flesh also. One must be continually on the march, then one must halt, preach, argue, pull damned souls out of the toils of Satan, stand firm against their lies and their derision, and persevere, travel on… to halt again and preach again. And this heresy is so widespread and so deep-rooted, your

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Holiness, that although we well know that we are assisted by the grace of God, sometimes our faith in our success fails us. A great number of that people are plunged into the darkness of heresy and infected with that disease of the soul, and God alone can cure them. Those damned souls who – in the height of their pride – do nothing but revive old errors in a thousand different forms and dare to call themselves Cathars – that is, pure souls! – constantly maintain that Deus non fecit visibilia, that bodies and all that surround them are nothing but the works of the Devil… and thus go on speaking evil of everything, refusing baptism saying that baptismus aquae nihil valet, and the Eucharist, asserting that hostia sacrata non est corpus Christi, and marriage, maintaining that matrimonium est peccatum, in matrimonium non est salus, est meretricium… and that morti non resurgent because the resurrection of the body is a lie. They practise usury, theft and rapine… and they share the fruits of these sinful deeds with their children. They never invoke the aid of the saints nor of the Virgin Mary. They refuse the cross. They never give alms to anyone. They are extremely avaricious… and they have this and other things in common with the Jews.” He gave a cautious glance towards the big man with red hair who was scrutinising him impassively. “They having drunk the poison of error from the mouth of the serpent of old, and our bodies – according to them – being the creation of Satan and not of God, all thing are permitted them, every kind of licentiousness is practised by them, such as having carnal intercourse with one’s own sister, mother, daughter or granddaughter… all practices to which they devote themselves during the night, consecrating their sins to Satan. Their invalids are suffocated, with the sacrilegious intention of making martyrs of them: and refusing as they do this world, they practise self- starvation and cause themselves to die bloodless and unreplenished. Their world is one of death and cruelty. And to all this, one must add an infinity of other nefariousness – like the fact that their leaders, their boni homines, never go about alone but always in pairs… and they never leave one another, practising carnal intercourse with one another – or other errors like the blessing and sharing out of bread, which they do every day, distributing it to everyone, to murderers, fornicators and robbers. But such and so many are their errors and their wickedness, that they ought all to be collected and written down in a book… and with your permission, Holy Father, I am thinking of compiling such a work. It would all be as nothing if it were possible to bring them back to true belief again, but abbot Arnauld will be my witness that the poison of error that they have drunk has been too strong, and – except for a very few cases – our work as preachers has been in vain. With bitterness in my heart for having failed in a mission on behalf of the Vicar of Christ on Earth, and the sadness of not having led back under your care so many souls bent on

50 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters their own damnation, I must warn you of another danger. Not only do the Cathars teach cruelty and death: they proclaim Your ending, your Holiness. They say that St Peter was never pope in Rome; they preach that the mass is an invention of ours… and not a divine institution. They blasphemously assert that the founder of this Church was not Our Lord Jesus Christ, but Pope Sylvester. Forgive me, Holy Father, for what I’m going to say, but they – true creatures of Satan that they are! – say that You, Your Holiness, are Lucifer… and that our Church is unworthy of the name it bears because it is simply swollen with wealth and luxury, that it’s an organ of the Devil, a den of thieves, the Whore of Babylon of the Apocalypse. And they want to overthrow it and to seat themselves in its place, as the only bearers of God’s truth. Forgive me, Your Holiness… but those damned souls are in deadly earnest, and my fear is that they are the very devils that the Antichrist has sent before him onto the earth, to prepare his path. And don’t imagine that they’re just like those heretics of Orvieto and Viterbo: the Cathars of Provence and of Toulouse – or of the Albigeois, if you prefer – are very much more dangerous. They are another race, Your Holiness, they don’t have in their blood that Christian teaching that comes to us directly from St Peter! Forgive me, brother Arnauld… don’t be offended, you’re not a Provençal any more: you belong to another realm, the most glorious of all: that of Holy Church!

During this Jeremiad, which seemed as if it would never end, the wary expression on the gloomy face of the abbot Arnauld-Amaury had given way to one of boredom. The pope had followed the long invective with attention, without batting an eyelid, looking abbot Raniero fixedly in the eye, as if to read his mind in his glance. He didn’t reply at once. Then, with a thin but very clear voice, he answered: “Raniero, we have nothing for which to forgive you: your report has been full and exact. Now you will go on working by our side, because the world is very wide and all its peoples have need of our guidance. Although brother Raoul has left us – may God keep him in His glory – in Provence we still have both brother Pierre de Castelnau and brother Arnauld here. You’ll see, God will enlighten us as to how to defeat this Evil. Besides, we must submit to his designs: as the bird is born to fly, so man is born to suffer, but at the same time to fight against Evil and the powers of Darkness. Brother Raniero, I now want to ask you to do three things. None knows of our, nor of our faithful Arnauld’s coming here to Nemi: everyone knows only that I had to go to Montefiascone. And nobody knows of brother Arnauld’s visits to Orvieto and Viterbo. The support of the Cistercian Order is indispensable to us, in sustaining the burden of our pastoral ministry, and this meeting must remain a secret. For this reason I ask you – and you,

51 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters brother Arnauld, too – not to take any written notes. We’re lucky not to have with us anyone like the abbot of Andres, who’ld even have noted down how many oranges we’ve eaten during our conversation! Lastly, I’ld like to ask you to leave us alone with brother Arnauld.” Abbot Raniero stood up, kissed the pope’s hand and was on the point of leaving the room, when he seemed to remember something: “Excuse me, Your Holiness, but you said three things… “Then go and start getting ready a really good lunch for brother Arnauld, who will soon have a much longer journey to make.” As soon as abbot Raniero had gone, the expressions on the faces of the two remaining became very friendly. “Arnauld! Who would have thought it: last month I saw Stefano again, and consecrated him archbishop of Canterbury – and today I’m seeing you. I’m really happy. What a long time it’s been, and how sad it is to keep in touch with you only by means of cold, official letters. However, one can’t have everything. One has to put aside some things. And I’ve had to sacrifice friendship.” “Your Holiness…” “No more Holiness, now that we’re alone together. I’m Lotario, in remembrance of our youth… and to simplify what we have to say to each other.” “All right, Lotario… Lotario the Great, as we all used to call you! What marvellous years we spent in Paris – even if you did seem to be more particularly fond of Stefano and Roberto, than of me.” “On the contrary: it was you who preferred to spend the evening in the taverns, than studying with your friends.” From his sullen eyes Arnauld flashed a cheerful glance: “Lotario the Great: I used to say that one day you’ld have princes, Kings and emperors at your feet. And now you’ve got there!” “I’m nothing but the unworthy representative of Him to whom belongs the Earth and all that it contains and all who inhabit it. And your youthful ambition? To regain that which had belonged to your ancestors, the dukedom of Narbonne: I too – see – haven’t forgotten the dreams of our youth. You wanted to choose the way of the Lord, and for that you gave up all hope of realising that other ambition. But you’ve chosen the better path, and now you’re taking part in the extirpation from the noble Christian land of Provence, of the serpent of heresy, you’re crushing the scorpions that pierce men’s souls with the stings of seduction, destroying the locusts of Giulah hidden in the dust among a great swarm of other insects, halting the black horse of the Apocalypse on which sits Satan with the scales in his hand!”

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“Lotario… time is short, and we have many things to discuss and to decide. Now fortunately we’re alone, noone is listening to us… yes, yes – except God, of course! But we must be perfectly frank, because this conversation may decide the future of the whole realm of the Church, and certainly of my part of it. D’you agree? Or do you want to hear another litany like that from the so learned abbot, your confessor? I don’t think your plans for me were like that, when you sent him to find me nine years ago, in the land of Spain, at Poblet. It’s true, I owe it you if in so short a time I’ve reached the summit of my order, and I’m sorry that when I preach I can only harangue the listeners. But my political vision is very clear: if it had been for me to decide, I would at once have resorted to arms… whereas you think also of the judgement of history, and for that reason I’ve bowed to your will. We’ve preached. We’ve kept up appearances. Do you want me to speak frankly to you now… or would you rather I lard my discourse with biblical quotations?” The pope seemed stupefied by such boldness, but quickly recovered: “No, Arnauld. We must be absolutely frank. Begin wherever you like – but I want the truth.” Arnauld began again, making an effort to modulate his periods, in his deep voice: “Man is held between two forces: the spirit and the flesh. The corruptible body drags the soul down with it, so that the latter only with great difficulty can remain pure while it dwells in the flesh. With such a sentence – pronounced in public in the region of Toulouse – the speaker immediately declares himself a heretic, and condemns himself. If he doesn’t repent and abjure, he’s thrown into the fire and burned alive. But noone has ever dreamed of pointing the finger at pope Innocent III as being a heretic, nor of wanting to condemn him or to send him to the stake… although it’s he himself who is the author of that sentence, written five years ago in the letter to King John of England, after that king’s illegal marriage to Isabella.” “I don’t understand what you’re driving at …”, the pope interrupted, making an effort to keep calm; then with a gesture of the hand, he invited the other to carry on. “You know perfectly well where my drift leads, but like a good lawyer you want to make a thorough case. So let’s scrupulously analyse absolutely everything, keeping in mind the fact that the people whom you decide to condemn have no escape, because you represent the truth and the law.” “Not so. There is one law: the law of God. There is one truth: that of the Holy Scriptures.” In those cold, pale eyes there is no shadow of feeling. “No, Lotario. The Cathars, too, accept the New Testament and the sayings of Christ. The point is a different one. There is a rumour going around

53 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters that the Jews kill Christian children in their religious ceremonies. The Jews are the people who killed Christ, and don’t recognise his divinity: hence they are enemies of the Church. But the Jews are also the financiers of kings and princes who, by enlarging their power, diminish that of the Church. And the Jews – together with the Moors – are the translators of the writings of the Greeks, and from Spain they’re spreading pagan learning throughout Europe – science, mathematics, astronomy: pagan learning that’s changing the face of theology in Paris. They’re helping to introduce Aristotle into Christianity. They’re pushing the Western world into setting up the reasoning power of the Greeks against the ruling power of faith… and thus of the Church. Well, that’s the Jews for you: that’s why they’re being liquidated with our blessing. And don’t tell me that I’m wrong… otherwise you should, this very day, send out an edict addressed to all the bishops of Christendom, to shed some light on this business: set up real trials, with judges and witnesses: then eventually you’ll know whether or not the Jews kill Christian children! But neither you nor your predecessors have ever done, nor you nor your successors will ever do, such a thing.” He tried, in vain, to lighten his voice: “Shall we now talk about another accusation? That which was levelled against the first Christians, who met together in the catacombs to celebrate orgiastic rites. You know how false were such stories, you know what they were doing: they were praying, and they had to do so secretly, otherwise the Romans threw them to the lions to eat, or burned them alive. Well, the Cathars are compelled to do the same thing – except that they don’t even have the alternative possibility of the lions: for them there’s waiting, always and only, the bonfire. Or do we want to condemn St Augustine, who in his youth – in the heat of his mysticism and love of God – was just like one of the Cathars of our time? Should we strike him out of the calendar of the saints, because he had once believed in the God of Light and the God of Darkness? Lotario… the Cathars are simply taking cognisance of the imprisonment of man by the forces of Evil, and of his thereby desperate state. If you reread your own Treatise on the Misery of Man, you’ll realise that it’s a truly heretical book, and that the Cathars could very well take to it – so long as they didn’t know who was its author – as their new Gospel, since it’s a real masterpiece of disdain for the world, in which everything is misery and corruption, in which you dispraise knowledge, beauty and glory, our conception, our birth, our whole life and death. It’s a real apologia for Catharism! According to you, this Earth is a place of exile, of mud and corruption. This was your opinion, this is what you were like, when we were students in Paris, this was the cardinal Lotario dei Conti di Segni before he sat on the throne of St Peter.” He tried again to lighten his voice: “Lotario, the Cathars only want to revive primitive Christianity and make of it a rule

54 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters and an example for the whole of Christendom. This world, this real world, is for them the creation of the Evil One… an Evil that noone can mitigate or put an end to, because we – the ministers of the Church – have quite other things in mind than the cure of souls, taken up as we are with politics, with business, with wars of conquest, with luxury and ease.” The pope’s face took on a severe expression: “I’m sorry, Arnauld, that the most virulent form of this heresy should have developed precisely in your country… but from your accounts – yours and Raniero’s – I’m convinced that the corruption of the servants of God in Provence and in the country of the Albigeois is unequalled anywhere else. For my part, I’ve done everything in my power to reform the morals of Christendom, and at least in Rome, I’ve succeeded in that.” An air of hilarity lit up the gloomy face of Arnauld. Calmly his deep voice began to ring out in the round room, while he enumerated on his long fingers a remarkable catalogue: “You’ve been able to take advantage of your family relationship with cardinal Giovanni Conti. You’re building up a small empire for your brother Riccardo – investing him with offices, with fiefs and castles… castles that you’re taking away from their lawful owner: the young Frederick.” “The Donation of Constantine assigns the whole peninsula to the Church.” “The Donation of Constantine is a forgery. And we both know it. Besides, you’ve made your brother both treasurer and military commander-in- chief, to buy off or put down by force any popular insurrection in Rome. You’ve called in your uncle Ugolino Conti to be chief administrator of the Church. At Cori, if I’m not mistaken, you’ve installed your brother-in-law, and you’ve made Giacomo Conti Marshall of the Maremma. Very well, if your pontificate be a long one – as I hope it will! – the whole of Italy will be known as the peninsula of Conti.” “That doesn’t mean corruption or bad administration. I need to be surrounded by people whom I can absolutely trust.” “Certainly: go on relying on them. And it’s true that you’ve reformed the habits of the Curia, even in what they eat and drink, and clothes they wear… that I must give you! But even you have your weaknesses. It’s true, in my youth I was rather exuberant… if we can put it like that. What did you use to preach? The three deadly sins are sensuality, avarice and ambition! ” “I’ve said it and I’ll say it again. Everything depends on the will to resist them and to get the better of them.” “Certainly. But when we were young, in Paris, everyone and everything was in thrall to sensuality… except for that sainted fellow Jean de Matha, who

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– and it’s no coincidence! – avoided our company, perhaps to avoid temptation… and – no coincidence, again – has been the only one, with his Trinitarian Order, to establish something really pure and Christian.” “What are you saying, Arnauld? You know what were my only weaknesses…” “Certainly: oranges, and works of charity. And it looks to me as if they still are. But while the oranges may only give you a pain in the stomach sometimes, the other habit is – to say the least – not very edifying. It was like that in Paris… and it’s still the same in Rome: you keep inviting young men into your lodgings, you feed them with the left-over provisions from your own meals, and every Saturday – now, just as you did all those years ago – you wash the feet of all those poor boys, then you kiss their feet lingeringly… and very often keep one of them with you overnight… and then you give each one of them a silver coin. So that, for the sake of your charity, God will wash out the stain of sin and the filthiness of vice…” The deep voice of Arnauld fell silent. The pope looked at him without a word in reply. The silence grew tense between them. Then the white hand made a sign, and the tall, powerful man went on: “Lotario, I had to talk to you like this. I’m sure you wouldn’t let anyone else say that sort of thing to you, but I think a little cold douche of humility does even you good – especially at a time when we are facing a grave danger: woe to us if we should let ourselves be taken by surprise, blinded by the habit of overconfidence: Lotario, we two know each other through and through. We know every step of the road we took to get us where we are, and we know perfectly well what are the aims that we’ve set ourselves. You’ve dreamed of lording it over the whole world, of having kings and emperors kiss your feet. And you’re on the way to succeeding in that. I, much more modestly, am trying to regain possession of Narbonne. But there’ll be no more great ambitions to realise, nor possessions to regain, if we don’t first extirpate the heretics.” “Our preaching has failed, as expected: is that what you’re telling me?” “Yes, Lotario: and it was a weapon that never had any change of success against the Cathars: someone like Pierre, or Domingo de Guzman, could never hope to convince those people with words. Those people have their faith in their hearts… and they’re prepared to die for it. I’ve carried out all your orders to the letter, I’ve organised a campaign of preaching in the grand manner, with that Spaniard Domingo at its head, who’s an absolute fanatic. I, alas, was born only to organise and to command, like yourself. I, in my small way… you on the grand scale. Preaching isn’t our strong point: yours is a great display of biblical learning, which nonetheless doesn’t touch the listener’s heart, because it doesn’t come from the heart. Whereas when you

56 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters hear one of the Cathar perfecti speaking, you feel pierced to your innermost heart, you find yourself defenceless… and if you’ve even a little humanity left in you, you can do nothing but offer your soul to Christ. And if you don’t then turn back, there’s no escape: you find yourself on the other side, fated to struggle, to love, to suffer and to die with them.” His great voice subsided into a sort of gasp. “Arnauld, from the way you talk, I can tell that you’ve listened to one of their preachings…” “I had to, I had to hear them with my own ears. But I left in time to maintain that will to power, that fighting spirit of mine, that – together with yours – will today take the decision to eliminate those people. You never believed in the possibility that preaching could succeed in bringing those lost sheep to return to the fold: you’ve been thinking of the crusade from the beginning of this business. Well, then: counts, barons and knights are ready by now: the barbarians of the north are waiting a final signal from you, for them to come down to the south and teach those presumptuous provençals a lesson …” “Whereas in fact the people of Provence are simply civilised, cultured and refined…” “Certainly! It’s just a pity that they’ve let themselves be infected with this plague of heresy…” “My dear Arnauld, he who touches pitch gets tarred with it. However, this serpent of Manichaean, dualistic heresy is born and multiplies most of all wherever there is the strongest intolerance of any form of salutary authority. Look at the Paulicians in Armenia, who arose in the midst of the peasants’ resentment towards their Moslem and Byzantine conquerors; the Bogomils, who appeared out of the Slav peasants’ intolerance of the rule of their Tzar Peter: and now these Cathars of Provence Everywhere they’ve involved the people of those countries in claiming rights and lands. In the grand design that I’m devising, I have to consider and take account of that fact too, which can’t be pure coincidence. But tell me about Philip Augustus: can we count on his support?” “He’s an ill-educated, but not a stupid, king. He won’t hinder anyone from taking up arms against the presumptuous provençals.” “Against the plague of heresy, Arnauld… But, Arnauld: before finally drawing the sword, I need to know everything about these heretics of the country of the Albigeois.” A muscular spasm at the left side of the great monk’s mouth ran through the big scar in a grimace, while the cavernous voice resumed: “The Catharism of Provence is the most severe of all. The great difference is that here in Italy it’s confined, for instance, to Orvieto or Viterbo… and we can easily keep an

57 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters eye on it and extirpate it, whereas the whole of Provence and the Albigeois are infested with it, the towns and the countryside.” “Even the whole northern part of our peninsula is pretty well infected. But I was asking you something else: I’ve never been able to come among them: I want to be sure that the failure of our preaching is due to their obstinacy, and not to our lack of zeal. Arnauld, what are these Cathars really doing?” “First of all, let me break a lance on behalf of Pierre, of Domingo and all the others. Your empire is already large: and it will become immense. But for this to happen, you need people like us. We’ve preached salvation, till it became an obsession. We’ve turned the fear of Hell into a reign of terror, in the hope that the people would turn to us, as the only depositaries and judges of the truth and the means of salvation! But the presumptuous provençals have already acquired a strong sense of their own identity, they have a language that they’re proud of, they’re tolerant, and they admire and imitate the virtuous habits and the teachings of the perfecti. It’s not that we’ve failed, Lotario: we could never have won! We’ve done everything to discredit their boni homines, with their appearance of severity, representing them as corrupt, amoral hypocrites. But they give the lie to our words, by their behaviour. You ask me what they do? It’s easily said: they practise charity for their fellows, whom they call Christians, abstemious behaviour, love towards their God of Goodness and Light.” “Those are the perfecti, the boni hominess… the leaders and preachers: but the people? Don’t try to lead me by the nose with this story of Provence! The people may be hardly less ignorant and boorish than those of the North… but they’re still a people who can’t do without our guidance! They’re still humble and simple people who let themselves be won over by heresy, by these heresiarchs, in protest... and not by new, heretical doctrines! After all, they don’t even understand Christian orthodoxy: what do you think they can understand of Dualism?” “Those uneducated, humble and simple people… are very like those who first followed Christ.” “You’re a blasphemer!” “No. Just a military commander conscious that he must take certain decisions without any hesitation. The problem is that there’s no time left to refute this heresy: it’s spread through all social classes, even the highest. Nobles, sickened as much as the people are by the avarice and the tithes of our ministers of God, so that even when they’re not themselves converted, they tolerate and sometimes protect those who are. Last year the sister of the Comte de Foix, the lady Esclarmonde, took the consolamentum – their baptism

58 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters of the spirit! All the same, it’s a heresy that’s taken root most of all among the craftsmen and the country people, who are exploited by our taxes, sickened by our corruption, and longing for a pure Church – which they’ve found in the Cathar perfecti. So they follow them. There’s no discrimination between the sexes: other women, like Esclarmonde, have become perfectae. Yes, they’re against oath-taking, as also against the scaffold, the gallows and the stake. They preach in the simplest language. They don’t need consecrated places of worship, or churches! They preach the holding of goods in common, just like the earliest Christian communities. The boni homines are educated men, they know the Holy Scriptures, they are very learned, especially in medicine, and they look after the sick. What more do you want me to tell you? They’re against marriage, it’s true… but not in order to enjoy more licentious carnal intercourse: on the contrary, because they don’t want to encourage the procreation of any more human beings: They believe the experiment of life has been a failure.” Not for moment had the pope’s eyes strayed from Arnauld’s face. Then, in a sad tone of voice, he replied: “Those people have made a choice, without letting themselves be guided by me. The will of man is corrupt, and hence has chosen error: humano sensu electa. For the unity of the Church, Catharism represents the greatest danger that it has ever faced. God may even be hard on me, but in the end he’ll forgive me, because I shall have been acting only for the sake of His glory. Catharism is already a revolution, and history will understand my works, just as it does those of kings and emperors who have always been obliged to preserve their power – consilio et auxilio – for the protection of their people, by suppressing, always and everywhere, any signs of insubordination. History won’t have to forgive me. History will understand and appreciate my firmness. To be in favour of the revival of poetry, of love and of liberty is to be weak. It’s my duty to direct the purifying fire of divine justice against that people and against those castles that have opened their doors first to the poets and then to the Cathar perfecti: poets and heretics who have even dared to raise to the same dignity as that of man, that creature of Satan woman! I shall reconquer the Holy Land, I shall chase the infidel from Christian Spain, I shall isolate the Jews from the community of Christendom, I shall put out the fires of heresy, I shall make of Europe a fiefdom of Christ, I shall prepare the ground for my successors to subdue the whole world to the rule of God.” He moistened his thin, red lips with his tongue: “I shall leave behind me this enormous field of gleaming, white churches: that’s what history will remember me for.” Arnauld had listened to this declaration without any particular sign of feeling. “Lotario, history will certainly record that you have also created the

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Holy Inquisition. And you can’t give the credit for that simply to your predecessors: you’ve contrived to obliterate the comprehensive agreement that Frederick Barbarossa drew up with Lucius III, because it prescribed too many different kinds of punishments… too many and too ineffective – so you’ve kept only the confiscation of goods and the stake! And then there’s your bull Vergentis in senium, which incited and aided the bishop of Orvieto and the praetor Pietro Parenzo to extirpate heresy from that city. According to what I’ve been told, given that at Orvieto almost all the buildings confiscated from the heretics had been taken by the Comune, on the 27th of this very last month you’ve perfected the system, by establishing – in your bull to repress heresy in Viterbo – that the heretics’ goods be sold and the proceeds then divided in three parts: the first third being spent on rebuilding the city walls, the second being paid to whoever denounces the heretic… and the third to the Curia that condemns them.” His grim eyes smiled. “You’re a great jurist, Lotario. A great politician, a great leader and a great emperor! But as the Vicar of Christ on Earth I’m afraid you haven’t attained perfection…” “A kingdom such as I have in mind – the kingdom of the Faith – if it’s to last for centuries, must of necessity invent and develop a mechanism that will snuff out any spark of heresy.” A silence as of the tomb fell, in that small circular room: for some moments in the two men’s eyes there still flickered a hint of indecision. Then the deep voice of Arnauld broke the frigid silence: “Very well… put an end to our preaching and to that of that fanatic Domingo de Guzman. Entrust the Christian world – Provence included! – to the faith of Jean de Matha and Félix de Valois: They’re the only churchmen of such exalted spirituality as could seriously be set against the Cathars. Their faith in God… as against the pessimism of the heretics. The joyous vision… against the repugnance for this life, Jean de Matha… or Domingo de Guzman.” There was another long silence. Then the clear but angry voice of the Pope broke into the atmosphere of theatrical suspense that Arnauld had created: “Suppose that he should succeed, then anyway the Church – my all- powerful, universal Church! – would disappear: you and I would become wandering, mendicant preachers, and our highest aim would be to raise the ransom for some Christian prisoner in the hands of the Saracens. No. That would be the end.” “Perhaps it would only be the end of us, Lotario.” “But you know what happened two centuries ago, when some mistake brought your humble Gerbert d’Aurillac to Rome – to rule the Church – as Pope Sylvester II. He’d almost perfected that perverse piece of machinery that measured the time… with water, for God’s sake! D’you know what would

60 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters have happened, if he’d succeeded in constructing it? Then every place of habitation would have had its own pagan measurement of time: every city, every village, would have had no more need of our bells, those regulators of their activities, their life and their faith! Gerbert had gathered around him students flocking from the four corners of Christendom… there were always large crowds to listen to his disputations and speeches. Never had there been seen such an erroneous intellectual and scientific ferment. He’d learned mathematics from the infidel and had started to use the new Indian numbers though by God’s will he didn’t know about the zero. He wasn’t aware of the immense power of knowledge! But because of all this they had to invent the legend that he was a magician and a heretic. And then Divine Providence saw to it that his pontificate lasted barely four years. After which a great enthusiasm for liturgical works put out the alarming fire that he had so carelessly lit.” Arnauld’s eyes widened: “For Sylvester II, what you call Divine Providence was the hand of Stefania, who poured out the poison. But I think we need say no more. It’s for you, Lotario, for you to decide and choose: between a future in the hands of Jean de Matha, or of Domingo de Guzman. Between hope or certainty, between love or fear. Between our elimination or our empire. Between mathematics or theology.” “You know that the times in which we live and the gravity of the questions at issue don’t allow us to take any other path. Credere iubemur, discutere prohibemur: we are commanded to believe and forbidden to argue. We cannot allow any freedom to human thought.” “I can understand that. This empire is yours. Yours must be the decision. I’m ready to lead an army.” Another spasm ran through the great scar. The pope listened without any sign of emotion showing in his face. His pale eyes were impenetrable: he hardly shifted his gaze or blinked his eyelids at all. Then his thin, clear voice broke the silence: “Ascending the throne of Peter, I’ve been given the power to overturn, to disperse, to destroy, to dissipate, to build and to plant: but one can’t declare war and announce a crusade unless some very serious outrage has occurred…” The deep voice seemed to set the seal on the gravity of the atmosphere that had been created in those few seconds of sepulchral silence: “It will occur.” The pope clasped his hands, and made as if to caress the large ring with its red stone. The he rested his fingertips on the arms of his chair. But he didn’t speak. It was the deep voice that went on, with no sign of emotion: “Lotario, wars always need martyrs! Even on the other side, much innocent blood has already been shed. For example, about thirty years ago at Rheims,

61 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters the archbishop of that city and several priests were out walking in the countryside; one of them – one Gervase Tilbury – caught sight of a very beautiful girl, called Rémoise, who was working among the vines. The young priest went up to her, and made amorous advances to her, to the point of embarking on caresses and trying to have carnal relation with her on the spot, among the hanging bunches of grapes. The girl, much afraid and hardly daring to look him in the face, replied that she couldn’t give herself to him. ‘If I lose my virginity – she told him – my body will be so defiled that I shall be irremediably condemned to eternal damnation.’ The young priest, upset by this refusal, took her straight to the archbishop: the young Rémoise has taken up a heretical position! Her very phrase betrays the poisonous serpent of heresy! The girl goes to the stake and is burned alive – praying to God.” A shadow – then a flickering light – seems to appear in the pope’s eyes. Then it vanishes suddenly, in the clarity of his voice: “Her God.” The sepulchral voice of Arnauld adds laconically: “Certainly… her God.” “My faithful Arnauld, we have been given no alternative.” “No, Lotario… none. As that genial pagan said, unfortunately simul flare sorbereque haud facile est: you can’t drink and whistle at the same time, “The pope seemed suddenly to remember something: “who said that?” “Titus Maccius Plautus… Plautus: why?” “I’ve remembered that I must charge you with another task. Have you got Abbot Raniero’s two keys with you?”

The more the horror of this conversation dawned on me, the more a rage such as I had never felt before burned within me. My whole body painfully cramped, one arm gone to sleep, I didn’t dare make the least movement. But at the mention of Plautus, my mind was on fire. I realised that they were opening the famous cupboard. The pope turned to his red-haired companion: “Look Arnauld: here is the pith of the revolutionary science of the pagan world, the learning which could endanger the future of our reign.” He took three books out of the cupboard. “Can they possibly be so important, Lotario?” the deep voice intoned. “Your Cathars are nothing compared to these. Here there’s so much of that learning, that by itself it could alter the course of history. I’m entrusting them to you, and you’re to hand them – without fail – directly, personally to Brother Elias.” “Very well. Although I’m not very friendly with him…” said Arnauld, trying at the same time to have a look inside the books, “but – excuse my ignorance – if they’re so dangerous… wouldn’t it be better to destroy them?”

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The pope gave Arnauld a pitying look: “Science must never be destroyed. It must be studied, absorbed, understood and jealously guarded. And developed… but only when, how, where and by whom we say. That’s how we can keep hold of such an immense empire. For the good of mankind. World without end…” “Amen…” said Arnauld, and went on turning the pages of the three books. Noticing his curiosity, the pope added: “They’re three apparently very ordinary books. Look at this one – the letters of some unknown writer called Theophilact Simocatta, but with something else at the end… d’you see? Yes, it’s Greek, so you can’t read it. Look at this other one: comedies of Plautus… but look at the last part: yes, these are in Greek too. And look at this other one… Plautus again…” Just at this moment I heard a noise, and soon afterwards I glimpsed the abbot Raniero approaching the other two, telling them that the meal was ready; then, noticing the books, he plucked up courage, saying: “Excuse me, your Holiness… has something happened? All those pages in Greek… years ago I gave myself the task of taking them out of that precious palimpsest with the Old Testament, and reordering them in that other manuscript of Plautus, that had been saved from the destruction of the museum of Cardinal Orsini… just as you had suggested I should: it is actually a bit smaller. I’m keeping the palimpsest in the library of Saint Anastasius, in Rome. Your Holiness…” The pope looked first at Arnauld, who – despite the curiosity writ large across his face – seemed not to want to get involved; then, very serious, he turned towards the abbot, handing him a small manuscript that he had been keeping near him since the beginning of the conversation. The abbot Raniero took it, and looked at it: “It’s a little book about mathematics… I think it’s about the new figures: is there something wrong, your Holiness? I don’t understand…” “Although you ought to, since you’re such good friends with that young and brilliant Pisan mathematician, that Leonardo who wrote the Liber Abaci, a book that’s very like this… d’you really not see anything odd about this book?” “No, your Holiness: My little abacus is only a little book about numbers… “And the author? What about him?” “Jordanus… Jordanus de Nemore…” He raised his rheumy eyes from the page: then with a cautious, timorous glance: “No, your Holiness…”

At this point my heart seemed to burst: the powers of hell were arrayed against me! The thick walls of the tower no longer seemed to keep out the

63 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters summer heat: I was being consumed in a blazing fire of horror and fear. I tried to keep calm… but I was trembling. The pope went on: “Brother Raniero: Nemore could also stand for Nemi… or am I wrong? Nemore, Nemus, del Bosco Sacro… Who is Giordano del Bosco Sacro? Who’s Giordano di Nemi? The mathematical contents of this book come, absolutely certainly, from this copy of Plautus. How was that possible if noone has ever opened it except you? Is there someone here at Nemi, called Giordano, an educated person… who could freely get at these books? Brother Raniero, be honest.” The abbot had turned pale. I was sweating and shaking. “Yes, your Holiness… there is a young lay brother, who lives here all the year, and – together with old Jerome – looks after the castle, works the land, prepares the wool and the parchment… and is called Giordano. But they’re both illiterate, they can hardly talk the vulgar tongue… It can’t be him, your Holiness, it can’t” “But this book by Giordano del Bosco Sacro – or di Nemi, if you like – this rare and precious Little abacus, wasn’t bought from some Jewish book- seller in their part of Rome… but was sold at Ostia, to your friend Leonardo Bonaccio, about seven years ago, by a young man who was as adept with the abacus as you are with the Holy Scriptures, with a wiry physique, short of stature, with thick, dark curly hair.” At these last words the abbot seemed to grow faint, while I tried to make myself even smaller, to not breathe. “Your Holiness, I must be honest: once – only once, I swear! – many years ago, abbot Berardo and I got this cupboard cleaned by the old lay- brother Jerome… and we left him here alone for a short time…” “I should like to believe you. Anyway, call that young man: I want to talk to him. And bring old Jerome here as well.” “But lunch, your Holiness…” “Afterwards, afterwards: this is much more important. Go and get them… and in future be more careful: with your passion for learning, read all the books you’ve got here, learn them by heart, whatever you like, so long as all that enormous knowledge stays shut up in your mind. You can’t entrust it to just anyone… still less to a layman like Leonardo. D’you understand?” “Your Holiness, I’m sure that the Liber abaci by the Pisan is all his work, because he’s travelled in Egypt, in Greece and in Syria… and it’s there that he certainly learned mathematics from the infidels. Furthermore, if you want to keep the best works of science strictly for yourself, you’ll need to have someone at your side who’ll take care of that. And, in all humility, I’ld damn my soul in order that our – and your – library be an important one. Anyway,

64 Adriano Petta “Pure heresy” – synopsis & the 3 first chapters don’t worry: the young Pisan and his fellow-citizens are not aiming to revolutionise the world… but simply to make it a bit easier to keep accounts of their commercial transactions. You can be sure there’ll be no other applications of these numbers.” “Let’s hope so, brother Raniero.” I was trembling. And I was thinking of Jerome. And I was still sweating, and trying to keep myself hidden behind the books. It felt like an eternity before I heard abbot Raniero return: “I can’t find either of them, your Holiness… neither of them…” It was at that moment that everyone heard a twittering sound. I couldn’t see it… but it was certainly a sparrow: it must have got in through the crack in the wall beside the niche in which I was hiding. I tried to stretch out one leg, to reach it, to chase it out… but I only succeeded in making it cheep louder. I didn’t dare look around. Then I heard abbot Raniero: “It must be a sparrow, your Holiness, and it must have got in through one of the cracks in the tower. Quite often the crows perch there.” “Couldn’t we release it?” “Certainly, your Holiness, it must be behind some piece of furniture: we’ll do that after you’ve gone, don’t worry.” They were about to leave the room, when the pope stopped in his tracks: “No, brother Raniero: we’ll release it straight away. Then we’ll have done at least one good thing today!” The wretched bird was flapping about more and more wildly, and I was on the point of giving myself up for lost. I heard them coming closer. The strong hands of Arnauld-Amaury shifted the cupboard… and the cross shaped scar at the side of his mouth came in sight: he shifted it further… I met the other’s pale, cold eyes. Everyone was paralysed with surprise. Then abbot Raniero exclaimed: “Giordano!” It was as if he had given me the word. I fell on Arnauld’s neck: I barely heard his choking cry, as I flew down the stairs. The cavernous voice began to ring out. At the first floor I flung myself through a window and began to run along the roof, behind the battlements. I flew, I jumped, I sprang into empty space, I hurled myself along. At last I came to the back of the castle, facing to the west. I leaned out between two battlements: there was just time to see that the old man had carried out my instructions… and I flew down, onto a great bed of hay. From behind a bush, Jerome appeared: “Here, there’s a knife and a bit of food: fly! Don’t play the hero! May God protect you!” And he handed me a small shoulder-bag.

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I said goodbye to him as I ran down the steep path, towards the mirror of Diana. I don’t know how many times I fell, I often seemed to hear shouts behind me. But I never stopped once. Now I was running beside the lake. I reached the mouth of the outlet that runs through the mountain and comes out into the valley of Aricia. When I was far along in that dark, wet, underground channel, only then did I stop to get my breath. Then I dragged myself on, glimpsing a faint pallor ahead… until at last the light of the sun signalled the end of the tunnel.

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