The Name of the Rose

FROM LAUDS TO PRIME

In setting down these words, I feel weary, as I felt that night — or, rather, that morning. What can be said? After matins the abbot sent most of the monks, now in a state of alarm, to seek everywhere; but without any result.

Toward lauds, searching Berengar’s cell, a monk found under the pallet a white cloth stained with blood. He showed it to the abbot, who drew the direst omens from it. Jorge was present, and as soon as he was informed, he said, “Blood?” as if the thing seemed improbable to him. They told Alinardo, who shook his head and said, “No, no, at the third trumpet death comes by water…”

William examined the cloth, then said, “Now everything is clear.”

“Where is Berengar?” they asked him.

“I don’t know,” he answered. Aymaro heard him and raised his eyes to heaven, murmuring to Peter of Sant’Albano, “Typically English.”

Toward prime, when the sun was already up, servants were sent to explore the toot of the cliff, all around the walls. They came back at terce, having found nothing.

William told me that we could not have done any better. We had to await events. And he went to the forges, to engage in a deep conversation with Nicholas, the master glazier.

I sat in church, near the central door, as the Masses were said. And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity.

TERCE

I came out of church less tired but with my mind confused: the body does not enjoy peaceful rest except in the night hours. I went up to the scriptorium and, after obtaining Malachi’s permission, began to leaf through the catalogue. But as I glanced absently at the pages passing before my eyes, I was really observing the monks.

I was struck by their calm, their serenity. Intent on their work, they seemed to forget that one of their brothers was being anxiously sought throughout the grounds, and that two others had disappeared in frightful circumstances. Here, I said to myself, is the greatness of our order: for centuries and centuries men like these have seen the barbarian hordes burst in, sack their abbeys, plunge kingdoms into chasms of fire, and yet they have gone on cherishing parchments and inks, have continued to read, moving their lips over words that have been handed down through centuries and which they will hand down to the centuries to come. They went on reading and copying as the millennium approached; why should they not continue to do so now?

The day before, Benno had said he would be prepared to sin in order to procure a rare book. He was not lying and not joking. A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

I leafed through the catalogue, and a feast of mysterious titles danced before my eyes: Quinti Sereni de medicamentis, Phaenomena, Liber Aesopi de natura animalium, Liber Aethici peronymi de cosmographia, Libei tres quos Arculphus episcopus Adamnano escipiente de locis sanctis ultramarinis designavit conscribendos, Libellus Q. Iulii Hilarionis de origine mundi, Solini Polyhistor de situ orbis terrarum et mirabilibus, Almagesthus … I was not surprised that the mystery of the crimes should involve the library. For these men devoted to writing, the library was at once the celestial Jerusalem and an underground world on the border between terra incognita and Hades. They were dominated by the library, by its promises and by its prohibitions. They lived with it, for it, and perhaps against it, sinfully hoping one day to violate all its secrets. Why should they not have risked death to satisfy a curiosity of their minds, or have killed to prevent someone from appropriating a jealously guarded secret of their own?

Temptations, to be sure, intellectual pride. Quite different was the scribe-monk imagined by our sainted founder, capable of copying without understanding, surrendered to the will of God, writing as if praying, and praying inasmuch as he was writing. Why was it no longer so? Oh, this was surely not the only degeneration of our order! It had become too powerful, its abbots competed with kings: in Abo did I not perhaps have the example of a monarch who, with monarch’s demeanor, tried to settle controversies between monarchs? The very knowledge that the abbeys had accumulated was now used as barter goods, cause for pride, motive for boasting and prestige; just as knights displayed armor and standards, our abbots displayed illuminated manuscripts … And all the more so now (what madness!), when our monasteries had also lost the leadership in learning: cathedral schools, urban corporations, universities were copying books, perhaps more and better than we, and producing new ones, and this may have been the cause of many misfortunes.

The abbey where I was staying was probably the last to boast of excellence in the production and reproduction of learning. But perhaps for this very reason, the monks were no longer content with the holy work of copying; they wanted also to produce new complements of nature, impelled by the lust for novelty. And they did not realize, as I sensed vaguely at that moment (and know clearly today, now aged in years and experience), that in doing so they sanctioned the destruction of their excellence. Because if this new learning they wanted to produce were to circulate freely outside those walls, then nothing would distinguish that sacred place any longer from a cathedral school or a city university. Remaining isolated, on the other hand, it maintained its prestige and its strength intact, it was not corrupted by disputation, by the quodlibetical conceit that would subject every mystery and every greatness to the scrutiny of the sic et non. There, I said to myself, are the reasons for the silence and the darkness that surround the library: it is the preserve of learning but can maintain this learning unsullied only if it prevents its reaching anyone at all, even the monks themselves. Learning is not like a coin, which remains physically whole even through the most infamous transactions; it is, rather, like a very handsome dress, which is worn out through use and ostentation. Is not a book like that, in fact? Its pages crumble, its ink and gold turn dull, if too many hands touch it. I saw Pacificus of Tivoli, leafing through an ancient volume whose pages had become stuck together because of the humidity. He moistened his thumb and forefinger with his tongue to leaf through his book, and at every touch of his saliva those pages lost vigor; opening them meant folding them, exposing them to the harsh action of air and dust, which would erode the subtle wrinkles of the parchment, and would produce mildew where the saliva had softened but also weakened the corner of the page. As an excess of sweetness makes the warrior flaccid and inept, this excess of possessive and curious love would make the book vulnerable to the disease destined to kill it.

What should be done? Stop reading, and only preserve? Were my fears correct? What would my master have said?

Nearby I saw a rubricator, Magnus of Iona, who had finished scraping his vellum with pumice stone and was now softening it with chalk, soon to smooth the surface with the ruler. Another, next to him, Rabano of Toledo, had fixed the parchment to the desk, pricking the margins with tiny holes on both sides, between which, with a metal stylus, he was now drawing very fine horizontal lines. Soon the two pages would be filled with colors and shapes, the sheet would become a kind of reliquary, glowing with gems studded in what would then be the devout text of the writing. Those two brothers, I said to myself, are living their hours of paradise on earth. They were producing new books, just like those that time would inexorably destroy… Therefore, the library could not be threatened by any earthly force, it was a living thing… But if it was living, why should it not be opened to the risk of knowledge? Was this what Benno wanted and what Venantius perhaps had wanted?

I felt confused, afraid of my own thoughts. Perhaps they were not fitting for a novice, who should only follow the Rule scrupulously and humbly through all the years to come — which is what I subsequently did, without asking myself further questions, while around me the world was sinking deeper and deeper into a storm of blood and madness.

It was the hour of our morning meal. I went to the kitchen, where by now I had become a friend of the cooks, and they gave me some of the best morsels.

SEXT

As I was eating, I saw Salvatore in one corner, obviously having made his peace with the cook, for he was merrily devouring a mutton pie. He ate as if he had never eaten before in his life, not letting even a crumb fall, and he seemed to be giving thanks to God for this extraordinary event.

He winked at me and said, in that bizarre language of his, that he was eating for all the years when he had fasted. I questioned him. He told me of a very painful childhood in a village where the air was bad, the rains frequent, where the fields rotted while the air was polluted by deathly miasmas. There were floods, or so I understood, season after season, when the fields had no furrows and with a bushel of seed you harvested a sextary, and then the sextary was reduced to nothing. Even the overlords had white faces like the poor, although, Salvatore remarked, the poor died in greater numbers than the gentry did, perhaps (he smiled) because there were more of them… A sextary cost fifteen pence, a bushel sixty pence, the preachers announced the end of the world, but Salvatore’s parents and grandparents remembered the same story in the past as well, so they came to the conclusion that the world was always about to end. And after they had eaten all the bird carcasses and all the unclean animals they could find, there was a rumor in the village that somebody was beginning to dig up the dead. Salvatore explained with great dramatic ability, as if he were an actor, how those “homeni malissimi” behaved, the wicked men who scrabbled with their fingers in the earth of the cemeteries the day after somebody’s funeral. “Yum!” he said, and bit into his mutton pie, but I could see on his face the grimace of the desperate man eating the corpse. And then, not content with digging in consecrated ground, some, worse than the others, like highwaymen, crouched in the forest and took travelers by surprise. “Thwack!” Salvatore said, holding his knife to his throat, and “Nyum!” And the worst among the worst accosted boys, offering an egg or an apple, and then devoured them, though, as Salvatore explained to me very gravely, always cooking them first. He told of a man who came to the village selling cooked meat for a few pence, and nobody could understand this great stroke of luck, but then the priest said it was human flesh, and the man was torn to pieces by the infuriated crowd. That same night, however, one man from the village went and dug up the grave of the murdered victim and ate the flesh of the cannibal, whereupon, since he was discovered, the village put him to death, too.

But Salvatore did not tell me only this tale. In broken words, obliging me to recall what little I knew of Provencal and of Italian dialects, he told me the story of his flight from his native village and his roaming about the world. And in his story I recognized many men I had already known or encountered along the road, and I now recognize many more that I have met since, so that after all this time I may even attribute to him adventures and crimes that belonged, to others, before him and after him, and which now, to my tired mind, flatten out to form a single image. This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.

Often during our journey I heard William mention “the simple,” a term by which some of his brothers denoted not only the populace but, at the same time, the unlearned. This expression always seemed to me generic, because in the Italian cities I had met men of trade and artisans who were not clerics but were not unlearned, even if their knowledge was revealed through the use of the vernacular. And, for that matter, some of the tyrants who governed the peninsula at that time were ignorant of theological learning, and medical, and of logic, and ignorant of Latin, but they were surely not simple or benighted. So I believe that even my master, when he spoke of the simple, was using a rather simple concept. But unquestionably Salvatore was simple. He came from a rural land that for centuries had been subjected to famine and the arrogance of the feudal lords. He was simple, but he was not a fool. He yearned for a different world, which, when he fled from his family’s house, I gathered, assumed the aspect of the land of Cockaigne, where wheels of cheese and aromatic sausages grow on the trees that ooze honey.

Driven by such a hope, as if refusing to recognize this world as a vale of tears where (as they taught me) even injustice is foreordained by Providence to maintain the balance of things, whose design often eludes us, Salvatore journeyed through various lands, from his native Montferrat toward Liguria, then up through Provence into the lands of the King of France.

Salvatore wandered through the world, begging, pilfering, pretending to be ill, entering the temporary service of some lord, then again taking to the forest or the high road. From the story he told me, I pictured him among those bands of vagrants that in the years that followed I saw more and more often roaming about Europe: false monks, charlatans, swindlers, cheats, tramps and tatterdemalions, lepers and cripples, jugglers, invalid mercenaries, wandering Jews escaped from the infidels with their spirit broken, lunatics, fugitives under banishment, malefactors with an ear cut off, sodomites, and along with them ambulant artisans, weavers, tinkers, chair-menders, knife-grinders, basket-weavers, masons, and also rogues of every stripe, forgers, scoundrels, cardsharps, rascals, bullies, reprobates, recreants, frauds, hooligans, simoniacal and embezzling canons and priests, people who lived on the credulity of others, counterfeiters of bulls and papal seals, peddlers of indulgences, false paralytics who lay at church doors, vagrants fleeing from convents, relic-sellers, pardoners, soothsayers and fortunetellers, necromancers, healers, bogus alms-seekers, fornicators of every sort, corruptors of nuns and maidens by deception and violence, simulators of dropsy, epilepsy, hemorrhoids, gout, and sores, as well as melancholy madness. There were those who put plasters on their bodies to imitate incurable ulcerations, others who filled their mouths with a blood-colored substance to feign accesses of consumption, rascals who pretended to be weak in one of their limbs, carrying unnecessary crutches and imitating the falling sickness, scabies, buboes, swellings, while applying bandages, tincture of saffron, carrying irons on their hands, their heads swathed, slipping into the churches stinking, and suddenly fainting in the squares, spitting saliva and popping their eyes, making the nostrils spurt blood concocted of blackberry juice and vermilion, to wrest food or money from the frightened people who recalled the church fathers’ exhortations to give alms: Share your bread with the hungry, take the homeless to your hearth, we visit Christ, we house Christ, we clothe Christ, because as water purges fire so charity purges our sins.

Long after the events I am narrating, along the course of the Danube I saw many, and still see some, of these charlatans who had their names and their subdivisions in legions, like the devils.

It was like a mire that flowed over the paths of our world, and with them mingled preachers in good faith, heretics in search of new victims, agitators of discord. It was Pope John — always fearing movements of the simple who might preach and practice poverty — who inveighed against the mendicant preachers, for, he said, they attracted the curious by raising banners with painted figures, preaching, and extorting money. Was the simoniacal and corrupt Pope right in considering the mendicant monks preaching poverty the equivalent of bands of outcasts and robbers? In those days, having journeyed a bit in the Italian peninsula, I no longer had firm opinions on the subject: I had heard of the monks of Altopascio, who, when they preached, threatened excommunications and promised indulgences, absolved those who committed robberies and fratricides, homicides and perjury, for money; they let it be believed that in their hospital every day up to a hundred Masses were said, for which they collected donations, and they said that with their income they supplied dowries for two hundred poor maidens. And I had heard tales of Brother Paolo Zoppo, who in the forest of Rieti lived as a hermit and boasted of having received directly from the Holy Spirit the revelation that the carnal act was not a sin — so he seduced his victims, whom he called sisters, forcing them to submit to the lash on their naked flesh, making five genuflections on the ground in the form of a cross, before he presented them to God and claimed from them what he called the kiss of peace. But was it true? And what link was there between these hermits who were said to be enlightened and the monks of poor life who roamed the roads of the peninsula really doing penance, disliked by the clergy and the bishops, whose vices and thefts they excoriated?

From Salvatore’s tale, as it became mingled with the things I already knew from my own experience, these distinctions did not emerge clearly: everything looked the same as everything else. At times he seemed to me one of those crippled beggars of Touraine who, as the story goes, took light at the approach of the miraculous corpse of Saint Martin, for they feared the saint would heal them and thus deprive them of their source of income, and the saint mercilessly saved them before they reached the border, punishing their wickedness by restoring to them the use of their limbs. At times, however, the monk’s ferocious face brightened with a sweet glow as he told me how, when living among those bands, he listened to the word of the Franciscan preachers, as outcast as he was, and he understood that the poor and vagabond life he led should be taken, not as a grim necessity, but as a joyous act of dedication, and he joined penitential sects and groups whose names he could not pronounce properly and whose doctrine he defined in highly unlikely terms. I deduced that he had encountered Patarines and Waldensians, and perhaps Catharists, Arnoldists, and Umiliati, and that, roaming about the world, he had passed from one group to another, gradually assuming as a mission his vagrant state, and doing for the Lord what he had done till then for his belly.

But how, and for how long? As far as I could tell, about thirty years before, he had joined a convent of Minorites in Tuscany, and there he had assumed the habit of Saint Francis, without taking orders. There, I believe, he learned that smattering of Latin he spoke, mixing it with the speech of all the places where he had been as a poor homeless wanderer, and of all the vagabond companions he had encountered, from the mercenaries of my lands to the Bogomils of Dalmatia. In the convent he had devoted himself to a life of penance, he said (Penitenziagite, he quoted to me, with eyes shining, and I heard again the expression that had aroused William’s curiosity), but apparently also the monks he was staying with had confused ideas, because, enraged by the canon of the neighboring church, who was accused of thefts and other wickedness, they invaded his house one day and sent him flying down the steps, and the sinner died; then they looted his house. For which the bishop sent his armed guards, the monks were dispersed, and Salvatore roamed at length in northern Italy with a band of Fraticelli, or mendicant Minorites, at this point without any law or discipline.

From there he took refuge in the Toulouse region and a strange adventure befell him, for he was inflamed by hearing the story of the crusaders’ great enterprises. A horde of shepherds and humble folk in great numbers gathered one day to cross the sea and fight against the enemies of the faith. They were called the Pastoureaux, the Shepherds. Actually, they wanted to escape their own wretched land. There were two leaders, who filled their heads with false theories: a priest who had been dismissed from his church because of his conduct, and an apostate monk of the order of Saint Benedict. This pair drove ignorant men so mad that they came running after the two in throngs, even boys of sixteen, against their parents’ wishes, carrying only knapsack and stick, all without money, leaving their fields, to follow the leaders like a flock, and they formed a great crowd. At this point they would no longer heed reason or justice, but only power and their own caprice. Gathered together and finally free, with a dim hope of promised lands, they were as if drunk. They stormed through villages and cities, taking everything, and if one of their number was arrested, they would attack the prison and free him. And they killed all the Jews they came upon here and there and stripped them of their possessions.

“Why the Jews?” I asked Salvatore. He answered, “And why not?” He explained to me that all his life preachers had told him the Jews were the enemies of Christianity and accumulated possessions that had been denied the Christian poor. I asked him, however, whether it was not also true that lords and bishops accumulated possessions through tithes, so that the Shepherds were not fighting their true enemies. He replied that when your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies. I reflected that this is why the simple are so called. Only the powerful always know with great clarity who their true enemies are. The lords did not want the Shepherds to jeopardize their possessions, and it was a great good fortune for them that the Shepherds’ leaders spread the notion that the greatest wealth longed to the Jews.

I asked him who had put into the crowd’s head the idea of attacking the Jews. Salvatore could not remember. I believe that when such crowds collect, lured by a promise and immediately demanding something, there is never any knowing who among them speaks. I recalled that their leaders had been educated in convents and cathedral schools, and they spoke the language of the lords, even if they translated it into terms that the Shepherds could understand. The Shepherds did not know where the Pope was, but they knew where the Jews were. Anyway, they laid siege to a high and massive tower of the King of France, where the frightened Jews had run in a body to take refuge. And the Jews sallying forth below the walls of the tower defended themselves courageously and pitilessly, hurling wood and stones. But the Shepherds set fire to the gate of the tower, tormenting the barricaded Jews with smoke and flames. And the Jews, unable to defeat their attackers, preferring to kill themselves rather than die at the hand of the uncircumcised, asked one of their number, who seemed the most courageous, to put them all to the sword. He consented, and killed almost five hundred of them. Then he came out of the tower with the children of the Jews, and asked the Shepherds to baptize him. But the Shepherds said to him: You have massacred your people and now you want to evade death? And they tore him to pieces; but they spared the children, whom they baptized. Then they headed for Carcassonne, carrying out many bloody robberies along the way. Then the King of France warned them that they had gone too far and ordered that they be resisted in every city they passed through, and he proclaimed that even the Jews should be defended as if they were the King’s men…

Why did the King become so considerate of the Jews at that point? Perhaps because he was beginning to realize what the Shepherds might do throughout the kingdom, and he was concerned because their number was increasing too rapidly. Further, he was moved to tenderness for the Jews, both because the Jews were useful to the trade of the kingdom, and because now it was necessary to destroy the Shepherds, and all good Christians had to have a good reason to weep over their crimes. But many Christians did not obey the King, thinking it wrong to defend the Jews, who had always been enemies of the Christian faith. And in many cities the humble people, who had had to pay usury to the Jews, were happy to see the Shepherds punish them for their wealth. Then the King commanded, under pain of death, that no aid be given the Shepherds. He gathered a considerable army and attacked them, and many of them were killed, while others saved themselves by taking flight and seeking refuge in the forests, but there they died of hardship. Soon all were annihilated. The King’s general captured them and hanged them, twenty or thirty at a time, from the highest trees, so the sight of their corpses would serve as an eternal example and no one would dare to disturb the peace of the realm again.

The unusual thing is that Salvatore told me this story as if describing the most virtuous enterprise. And in fact he remained convinced that the home of so-called Shepherds had aimed to conquer the sepulcher of Christ and free it from the infidels, and it was impossible for me to convince him that this fine conquest had already been achieved, in the days of Peter the Hermit and Saint Bernard, and under the reign of Saint Louis of France. In any case, Salvatore did not reach the infidels, because he had to leave French territory in a hurry. He went into the Novara region, he told me, but he was very vague about what happened at this point. And finally he arrived at Casale, where he was received by the convent of Minorites (and here I believe he met Remigio) at the very time when many of them, persecuted by the Pope, were changing habit and them, refuge in monasteries of other orders, to avoid being burned at the stake. As, indeed, Ubertino had told us. Thanks to his long familiarity with many manual tasks (which he had performed both for dishonest purposes, when he was roaming freely, and for holy purposes, when he was roaming for the love of Christ), Salvatore was immediately taken on by the cellarer as his personal assistant. And that was why he had been here for many years, with scant interest in the order’s pomp, but much to the administration of its cellar and larder, where he was free to eat without stealing and to praise the Lord without being burned.

I looked at him with curiosity, not because of the singularity of his experience, but because what had happened to him seemed to me the splendid epitome of so many events and movements that made the Italy of that time fascinating and incomprehensible.

What had emerged from those tales? The picture of a man who had led an adventurous life, capable even of killing a fellow man without realizing his own crime. But although at that time one offense to the divine law seemed to me the same as another, I was already beginning to understand some of the phenomena I was hearing discussed, and I saw that it is one thing for a crowd, in an almost ecstatic frenzy, mistaking the laws of the Devil for those of the Lord, to commit a massacre, but it is another thing for an individual to commit a crime in cold blood, with calculation, in silence. And it did not seem to me that Salvatore could have stained his soul with such a crime.

On the other hand, I wanted to discover something about the abbot’s insinuations, and I was obsessed by the idea of Fra Dolcino, of whom I knew almost nothing, though his ghost seemed to hover over many conversations I had heard these past few days.

So I asked Salvatore point-blank: “In your journeys did you ever meet Fra Dolcino?”

His reaction was most strange. He widened his eyes, if it were possible to open them wider than they were, he blessed himself repeatedly, murmured some broken phrases in a language that this time I really did not understand. But they seemed to me phrases of denial. Until then he had looked at me with good-natured trust, I would say with friendship. At that moment he looked at me almost with irritation. Then, inventing an excuse, he left.

Now I could no longer resist. Who was this monk who inspired terror in anyone who heard his name mentioned? I decided I could not remain any longer in the grip of my desire to know. An idea crossed my mind. Ubertino! He himself had uttered that name, the first evening we met him; he knew everything of the vicissitudes, open and secret, of monks, friars, and other species of these last years. Where could I find him at this hour? Surely in church, immersed in prayer. And since I was enjoying a moment of liberty, I went there.

I did not find him; indeed, I did not find him until evening. And so my curiosity stayed with me, for other events were occurring, of which I must now tell.

NONES

I found William at the forge, working with Nicholas, both deeply involved in their task. On the counter they had laid out a number of tiny glass discs, perhaps originally intended as parts of a window; with instruments they had reduced some of these to the desired thickness. William was holding them up before his eyes, testing them. Nicholas, for his part, was issuing instructions to the smiths for making the fork in which the correct lenses would be set.

William was grumbling, irritated because so far the most satisfactory lens was an emerald color, and, as he said, he did not want parchments to seem meadows to him. Nicholas went off to supervise the smiths. As William tried out the various discs, I told him of my dialogue with Salvatore.

“The man has had various experiences,” he said. “Perhaps he actually was with the Dolcinians. The abbey really is a microcosm, and when we have Pope John’s envoys and Brother Michael here, we’ll be complete.”

“Master,” I said to him, “I understand nothing.”

“About what, Adso?”

“First, about the differences among heretical groups. But I’ll ask you about that later. Now I am tormented by the problem of difference itself. When you were speaking with Ubertino, I had the impression you were trying to prove to him that all are the same, saints and heretics. But then, speaking with the abbot, you were doing your best to explain to him the difference between one heretic and another, and between the heretical and the orthodox. In other words, you reproached Ubertino for considering different those who were basically the same, and the abbot for considering the same those who were basically different.”

William set the lenses on the table for a moment. “My good Adso,” he said, “we will try now to make some distinctions, and we may as well use the terms of the school of Paris for our distinguishing. So: they say all men have the same substantial form, am I right?”

“Of course,” I said, proud of my knowledge, “men are animals but rational, and the property of man is the capacity for laughing.”

“Excellent. But Thomas is different from Bonaventure, Thomas is fat while Bonaventure is thin, and it may even be that Hugh is bad while Francis is good, and Aldemar is phlegmatic while Agilulf is bilious. Or am I mistaken?”

“No, that is the case, beyond any doubt.”

“Then this means there is identity in different men as to their substantial form, and diversity as to the accidents, or as to their superficial shape.”

“That is so, unquestionably.”

“When I say to Ubertino that human nature itself, in the complexity of its operations, governs both the love of good and the love of evil, I am trying to convince Ubertino of the identity of human nature. When I say to the abbot, however, that there is a difference between a Catharist and a Waldensian, I am insisting on the variety of their accidents. And I insist on it because a Waldensian may be burned after the accidents of a Catharist have been attributed to him, and vice versa. And when you burn a man you burn his individual substance and reduce to pure nothing that which was a concrete act of existing, hence in itself good, at least in the eyes of God, who kept him in existence. Does this seem to you a good reason for insisting on the differences?”

“The trouble is,” I said, “I can no longer distinguish the accidental difference among Waldensians, Catharists, the poor of Lyons, the Umiliati, the Beghards, Joachimites, Patarines, Apostles, Poor Lombards, Arnoldists, Williamites, Followers of the Free Spirit, and Luciferines. What am I to do?”

“Oh, poor Adso,” William said, laughing and giving me an affectionate slap on the nape, “you’re not really wrong! You see, it’s as if, over the last two centuries, and even earlier, this world of ours had been struck by storms of intolerance, hope, and despair, all together… No, that’s not a good analogy. Imagine a river, wide and majestic, which flows for miles and miles between strong embankments, where the land is firm. At a certain point, the river, out of weariness, because its flow has taken up too much time and too much space, because it is approaching the sea, which annihilates all rivers in itself, no longer knows what it is, loses its identity. It becomes its own delta. A major branch may remain, but many break off from it in every direction, and some flow together again, into one another, and you can’t tell what begets what, and sometimes you can’t tell what is still river and what is already sea…”

“If I understand your allegory, the river is the city of God, or the kingdom of the just, which is approaching the millennium, and in this uncertainty it no longer remains secure, false and true prophets are born, and everything flows into the great plain where Armageddon will take place…”

“That isn’t exactly what I was thinking. I was trying to explain to you how the body of the church, which for centuries was also the body of all society, the people of God, has become too rich, and wide, and it carries along the dross of all the countries it has passed through, and it has lost its own purity. The branches of the delta are, if you like, so many attempts of the river to flow as quickly as possible to the sea, that is, to the moment of purification. My allegory was meant only to tell you how the branches of heresy and the movements of renewal, when the river is no longer intact, are numerous and become mingled. You can also add to my poor allegory the image of someone who is trying to reconstruct the banks of the river with brute strength, but cannot do so. And some branches of the delta silt up, others are redirected to the river by artificial channels, still others are allowed to flow, because it is impossible to restrain everything and it is better for the river to lose a part of its water and still maintain its course, if it wants to have a recognizable course.”

“I understand less and less.”

“So do I. I’m not good at speaking in parables. Forget this story of the river. Try instead to understand that many of the movements you mentioned were born at least two hundred years ago and are already dead, yet others are recent…”

“But when heretics are discussed, they are all mentioned together.”

“True, and this is one of the ways heresy spreads and one of the ways it is destroyed.”

“Again I don’t understand.”

“God, how difficult it is. Very well. Imagine you are a reformer of morals and you collect some companions on a mountaintop, to live in poverty. And after a while you see that many come to you, even from distant lands, and they consider you a prophet, or a new apostle, and they follow you. Have they really come there for you or for what you say?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. Why otherwise?”

“Because from their fathers they have heard stories of other reformers, and legends of more or less perfect communities, and they believe this is that and that is this.”

“And so every movement inherits the offspring of others?”

“Of course, because the majority of those who flock after reformers are the simple, who have no subtlety of doctrine. And yet moral reform movements originate in different places and ways and with different doctrines. For example, the Catharists and the Waldensians are often mixed up. But there is a great difference between them. The Waldensians preached a moral reform within the church, the Catharists preached a different church, a different view of God and morality. The Catharists thought the world was divided between the opposing forces of good and evil, and they had built a church in which the perfect were distinguished from simple believers, and they had their sacraments and their rites; they had built a very rigid hierarchy, almost like that of our own Holy Mother, and they didn’t for a moment think of destroying every form of power. Which explains to you why men in command, landowners, feudal lords, also joined the Catharists. Nor did they think of reforming the world, because the opposition between good and evil for them can never be settled. The Waldensians, on the contrary (and along with them the Arnoldists, or Poor Lombards), wanted to construct a different world on an ideal of poverty, and this is why they received the outcasts and lived in community with the labor of their hands.”

“But why, then, are they confused and spoken of as the same evil weed?”

“I told you: what makes them live is also what makes them die. The movements grow, gathering simple people who have been aroused by other movements and who believe all have the same impulse of revolt and hope; and they are destroyed by the inquisitors, who attribute to one the errors of the other, and if the sectarians of one movement commit a crime, this crime will be attributed to each sectarian of each movement. The inquisitors are mistaken, rationally speaking, because they lump contradictory doctrines together; they are right, according to others’ irrationality, because when a movement of, say, Arnoldists springs up in one city, it is swelled by those who would have been or have been Catharists or Waldensians elsewhere. Fra Dolcino’s Apostles preached the physical destruction of clerics and lords, and committed many acts of violence; the Waldensians are opposed to violence, and so are the Fraticelli. But I am sure that in Fra Dolcino’s day there were many in his group who had previously followed the preachings of the Fraticelli or the Waldensians. The simple cannot choose their personal heresy, Adso; they cling to the man preaching in their land, who passes through their village or stops in their square. This is what their enemies exploit. To present to the eyes of the people a single heresy, which perhaps may suggest at the same time the renunciation of sexual pleasure and the communion of bodies, is good preaching technique: it shows the heretics as one jumble of diabolical contradictions which offend common sense.”

“So there is no relationship among them, and it is the Devil’s deception that makes a simple man who would like to be a Joachimite or a Spiritual fall into the hands of the Catharists, and vice versa?”

“No, that is not quite it. Let’s try again from the beginning, Adso. But I assure you, I am attempting to explain to you something about which I myself am not sure I possess the truth. I think the mistake is to believe that the heresy comes first, and then the simple folk who join it (and damn themselves for it). Actually, first comes the condition of being simple, then the heresy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a clear conception of the people of God. A great flock-good sheep and bad sheep — kept in order by mastiffs — the warriors, or the temporal power — the Emperor, and the overlords, under the guidance of the shepherds, the clerics, the interpreters of the divine word. The picture is straightforward.”

“But false. The shepherds fight with the dogs, because each covets the rights of the other.”

“True, and this is exactly what makes the nature of the flock unsure. Concerned as they are with tearing each other apart reciprocally, dogs and shepherds no longer tend the flock. A part of it is left outside.”

“What do you mean by outside?”

“On the margin. Peasants: only they are not really peasants, because they have no land, or what land they have does not feed them. And citizens: only they are not citizens, because they do not belong to a guild or a corporation; they are the little people, prey of anyone. Have you sometimes seen groups of lepers in the countryside?”

“Yes, once I saw a hundred together. Misshapen, their flesh decaying and all whitish, hobbling on their crutches, with swollen eyelids, bleeding eyes. They didn’t speak or shout; they twittered, like mice.”

“For the Christian people they are the others, those who remain on the fringe of the flock. The flock hates them, they hate the flock, who wish all lepers like them would die.”

“Yes, I recall a story about King Mark, who had to condemn Isolda the beautiful and was about to have her ascend the stake when the lepers came and said to the King that the stake was a mild punishment and that there was a worse one. And they cried to him: Give us Isolda that she may belong to all of us, our illness enflames our desires, give her to your lepers. Look at our rags, glued to our groaning wounds. She, who at your side enjoyed rich stuffs lined with squirrel fur and jewels, when she sees the courtyard of the lepers, when she has to enter our hovels and lie with us, then she will truly recognize her sin and regret this fine pyre of brambles!”

“I see that for a novice of Saint Benedict you have done some odd reading,” William remarked. I blushed, because I knew a novice should not read romances, but they circulated among us young people in the monastery of Melk and we read them at night by candlelight. “But that doesn’t matter,” William continued, “you have understood what I meant. The outcast lepers would like to drag everything down in their ruin. And they become all the more evil, the more you cast them out; and the more you depict them as a court of lemures who want your ruin, the more they will be outcast. Saint Francis realized this, and his first decision was to go and live among the lepers. The people of God cannot be changed until the outcasts are restored to its body.”

“But you were speaking of other outcasts; it isn’t lepers who form heretical movements.”

“The flock is like a series of concentric circles, from the broadest range of the flock to its immediate surroundings. The lepers are a sign of exclusion in general. Saint Francis understood that. He didn’t want only to help the lepers; if he had, his act would have been reduced to quite a poor and impotent act of charity. He wanted to signify something else. Have you been told about his preaching to the birds?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard that beautiful story, and I admired the saint who enjoyed the company of those tender creatures of God,” I said with great fervor.

“Well, what they told you was mistaken, or, rather, it’s a story the order has revised today. When Francis spoke to the people of the city and its magistrates and saw they didn’t understand him, he went out to the cemetery and began preaching to ravens and magpies, to hawks, to raptors feeding on corpses.”

“What a horrible thing!” I said. “Then they were not good birds!”

“They were birds of prey, outcast birds, like the lepers. Francis was surely thinking of that verse of the Apocalypse that says: ‘I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together at the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great!’ ”

“So Francis wanted to incite the outcasts to revolt?”

“No, that was what Fra Dolcino and his followers wanted, if anybody did. Francis wanted to call the outcast, ready to revolt, to be part of the people of God. If the flock was to be gathered again, the outcasts had to be found again. Francis didn’t succeed, and I say it with great bitterness. To recover the outcasts he had to act within the church, to act within the church he had to obtain the recognition of his rule, from which an order would emerge, and this order, as it emerged, would recompose the image of a circle, at whose margin the outcasts remain. So now do you understand why there are bands of Fraticelli and Joachimites who again gather the outcasts around themselves?”

“But we weren’t talking about Francis; we were talking about how heresy is produced by the simple and the outcast.”

“Yes. We were talking about those excluded from the flock of sheep. For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying ‘lepers’ we would understand “outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities: But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign. Excluded as they were from the flock, all of them were ready to hear, or to produce, every sermon that, harking back to the word of Christ, would condemn the behavior of the dogs and shepherds and would promise their punishment one day. The powerful always realized this. The recovery of the outcasts demanded reduction of the privileges of the powerful, so the excluded who became aware of their exclusion had to be branded as heretics, whatever their doctrine. And for their part, blinded by their exclusion, they were not really interested in any doctrine. This is the illusion of heresy. Everyone is heretical, everyone is orthodox. The faith a movement proclaims doesn’t count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is. As for the lepers, what can you ask of them? That they distinguish in the Trinitarian dogma or in the definition of the Eucharist how much is correct and how much is wrong? Come, Adso, these games are for us men of learning. The simple have other problems. And mind you, they solve them all in the wrong way. This is why they become heretics.”

“But why do some people support them?”

“Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power.”

“Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?”

“That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong. But there is no precise rule: it depends on the individuals, on the circumstances. This holds true also for the secular lords. Sometimes the city magistrates encourage the heretics to translate the Gospel into the vernacular: the vernacular by now is the language of the cities, Latin the language of Rome and the monasteries. And sometimes the magistrates support the Waldensians, because they declare that all, men and women, lowly and mighty, can teach and preach, and the worker who is a disciple after ten days hunts for another whose teacher he can become…”

“And so they eliminate the distinction that makes clerics irreplaceable! But, then, why does it happen that the same city magistrates rebel against the heretics and lend the church a hand in having them burned?”

“Because they realize the heretics’ growth could jeopardize also the privileges of the laity who speak in the vernacular. In the Lateran Council of 1179 (you see, these questions date back a hundred fifty years), Walter Map warned against what would happen if credence were given to those foolish and illiterate men the Waldensians. He said, if I recall properly, that they have no fixed dwelling, they go about barefoot and possess nothing, holding everything as common property, following naked the naked Christ; they begin in this very humble way because they are outcasts, but if you give them too much room they will drive out everyone else. This is why the cities favored the mendicant orders, and us Franciscans in particular: we fostered a harmonious balance between the need for penance and the life of the city, between the church and the burghers, concerned for their trade…”

“Was harmony achieved, then, between love of God and love of trade?”

“No, the movements of spiritual renewal were blocked; they were channeled within the bounds of an order recognized by the Pope. But what circulated underneath was not channeled. It flowed, on the one hand, into the movements of the flagellants, who endanger no one, or into the armed bands like Fra Dolcino’s, or into the witchcraft rituals of the monks of Montefalco that Ubertino was talking about…”

“But who was right, who is right, who was wrong?” I asked, bewildered.

“They were all right in their way, and all were mistaken.”

“And you,” I cried, in an access almost of rebellion, “why don’t you take a position, why won’t you tell me where the truth is?”

William remained silent for a while, holding the lens he was working on up to the light. Then he lowered it to the table and showed me, through the lens, a tool. “Look,” he said to me. “What do you see?”

“The tool, a bit larger.”

“There: the most we can do is look more closely.”

“But the tool remains always the same!”

“The manuscript of Venantius, too, will remain the same when, thanks to this lens, I’ve been able to read it. But perhaps when I’ve read the manuscript I’ll know a part of the truth better. And perhaps we’ll be able to make the life of the abbey better.”

“But that isn’t enough!”

“I’m saying more than I seem to be, Adso. This isn’t the first time I’ve spoken to you of Roger Bacon. Perhaps he was not the wisest man of all time, but I’ve always been fascinated by the hope that inspired his love of learning. Bacon believed in the strength, the needs, the spiritual inventions of the simple. He wouldn’t have been a good Franciscan if he hadn’t thought that the poor, the outcast, idiots and illiterate, often speak with the mouth of our Lord. The simple have something more than do learned doctors, who often become lost in their search for broad, general laws. The simple have a sense of the individual, but this sense, by itself is not enough. The simple grasp a truth of their own, perhaps truer than that of the doctors of the church, but then they destroy it in unthinking actions. What must be done? Give learning to the simple? Too easy, or too difficult. The Franciscan teachers considered this problem. The great Bonaventure said that the wise must enhance conceptual clarity with the truth implicit in the actions of the simple…”

“Like the chapter of Perugia and the learned memories of Ubertino, which transform into theological decisions the summons of the simple to poverty,” I said.

“Yes, but as you have seen, this happens too late, and when it happens, the truth of the simple has already been transformed into the truth of the powerful, more useful for the Emperor Louis than for a Friar of the Poor Life. How are we to remain close to the experience of the simple, maintaining, so to speak, their operative virtue, the capacity of working toward the transformation and betterment of their world? This was the problem for Bacon. ‘Quod enim laicali ruditate turgescit non habet effectum nisi fortuito,’ he said: The experience of the simple has savage and uncontrollable results. ‘Sed opera sapientiae certa lege vallantur et in finem debitum efficaciter diriguntur.’ Which is to say that even in the handling of practical things, be they agriculture, mechanics, or the governing of a city, a kind of theology is required. He thought that the new natural science should be the great new enterprise of the learned: to coordinate, through a different knowledge of natural processes, the elementary needs that represented also the heap of expectations, disordered but in its way true and right, of the simple. The new science, the new natural magic. According to Bacon, this enterprise was to be directed by the church, but I believe he said this because in his time the community of clerics was identified with the community of the learned. Today that is no longer the case: learned men grow up outside the monasteries and the cathedrals, even outside the universities. So I think that, since I and my friends today believe that for the management of human affairs it is not the church that should legislate but the assembly of the people, then in the future the community of the learned will have to propose this new and humane theology which is natural philosophy and positive magic.”

“A splendid enterprise,” I said, “but is it possible?”

“Bacon thought so.”

“And you?”

“I think so, too. But to believe in it we must be sure that the simple are right in possessing the sense of the individual, which is the only good kind. However, if the sense of the individual is the only good, how will science succeed in recomposing the universal laws through which, and interpreting which, the good magic will become functional?”

“Yes,” I said, “how can it?”

“I no longer know. I have had arguments at Oxford with my friend William of Occam, who is now in Avignon. He has sown doubts in my mind. Because if only the sense of the individual is just, the proposition that identical causes have identical effects is difficult to prove. A single body can be cold or hot, sweet or bitter, wet or dry, in one place — and not in another place. How can I discover the universal bond that orders all things if I cannot lift a finger without creating an infinity of new entities? For with such a movement all the relations of position between my finger and all other objects change. The relations are the ways in which my mind perceives the connections between single entities, but what is the guarantee that this is universal and stable?”

“But you know that a certain thickness of glass corresponds to a certain power of vision, and it is because you know this that now you can make lenses like the ones you have lost: otherwise how could you?”

“An acute reply, Adso. In fact, I have worked out this proposition: equal thickness corresponds necessarily to equal power of vision. I have posited it because on other occasions I have had individual insights of the same type. To be sure, anyone who tests the curative property of herbs knows that individual herbs of the same species have equal effects of the same nature on the patient, and therefore the investigator formulates the proposition that every herb of a given type helps the feverish, or that every lens of such a type magnifies the eye’s vision to the same degree. The science Bacon spoke of rests unquestionably on these propositions. You understand, Adso, I must believe that my proposition works, because I learned it by experience; but to believe it I must assume there are universal laws. Yet I cannot speak of them, because the very concept that universal laws and an established order exist would imply that God is their prisoner, whereas God is something absolutely free, so that if He wanted, with a single act of His will He could make the world different.”

“And so, if I understand you correctly, you act, and you know why you act, but you don’t know why you know that you know what you do?”

I must say with pride that William gave me a look of admiration. “Perhaps that’s it. In any case, this tells you why I feel so uncertain of my truth, even if I believe in it.”

“You are more mystical than Ubertino!” I said spitefully.

“Perhaps. But as you see, I work on things of nature. And in the investigation we are carrying out, I don’t want to know who is good or who is wicked, but who was in the scriptorium last night, who took the eyeglasses, who left traces of a body dragging another body in the snow, and where Berengar is. These are facts. Afterward I’ll try to connect them — if it’s possible, for it’s difficult to say what effect is produced by what cause. An angel’s intervention would suffice to change everything, so it isn’t surprising that one thing cannot be proved to be the cause of another thing. Even if one must always try, as I am doing.”

“Yours is a difficult life,” I said.

“But I found Brunellus,” William cried, recalling the horse episode of two days before.

“Then there is an order in the world!” I cried, triumphant.

“Then there is a bit of order in this poor head of mine,” William answered.

At this point Nicholas came back with an almost finished fork, holding it up victoriously.

“And when this fork is on my poor nose,” William said, “perhaps my poor head will be even more orderly.”

A novice came to say the abbot wished to see William, and was waiting for him in the garden. As we started off, William slapped his forehead, as if remembering only at this point something he had forgotten.

“By the way,” he said, “I’ve deciphered Venantius’s cabalistic signs.”

“All of them? When?”

“While you were asleep. And it depends on what you mean by ‘all.’ I’ve deciphered the signs that the flame caused to appear, the ones you copied out. The notes in Greek must wait till I have new lenses.”

“Well? Was it the secret of the finis Africae?”

“Yes, and the key was fairly easy. At his disposal Venantius had the twelve signs of the zodiac and eight other signs: for the five planets, the two luminaries, and the earth. Twenty signs in all. Enough to associate with them the letters of the Latin alphabet, since you can use the same letter to express the sound of the two initials of ‘unum’ and ‘velut.’ The order of the letters, we know. What could be the order of the signs, then? I thought of the order of the heavens, placing the zodiacal quadrant at the far edge. So, then: Earth, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, etc., and, afterward, the signs of the zodiac in their traditional sequence, as Isidore of Seville classifies them, beginning with Aries and the vernal equinox, ending with Pisces. Now, if you try this key, Venantius’s message takes on a meaning.”

He showed me the parchment, on which he had transcribed the message to big Latin letters: “Secretum finis Africae manus supra idolum age primum et septimum de quatuor.”

“Is that clear?” he asked.

“The hand over the idol works on the first and the seventh of the four …” I repeated, shaking my head. “It isn’t clear at all!”

“I know. First of all we have to know what Venantius meant by ‘idolum.’ An image, a ghost, a figure? And then what can this ‘four’ be that has a ‘first’ and a ‘seventh’? And what is to be done with them? Move them, push them, pull them?”

“So we know nothing and we are still where we started,” I said, with great dismay.

William stopped and looked at me with an expression not entirely benevolent. “My boy,” he said, “you have before you a poor Franciscan who, with his modest learning and what little skill he owes to the infinite power of the Lord, has succeeded in a few hours in deciphering a secret code whose author was sure would prove sealed to all save himself … and you, wretched illiterate rogue, dare say we are still where we started?”

I apologized very clumsily. I had wounded my master’s vanity, and yet I knew how proud he was of the speed and accuracy of his deductions. William truly had performed a job worthy of admiration, and it was not his fault if the crafty Venantius not only had concealed his discovery behind an obscure zodiacal alphabet, but had further devised an undecipherable riddle.

“No matter, no matter, don’t apologize,” William interrupted me. “After all, you’re right. We still know too little. Come along.”

VESPERS

The abbot was waiting for us with a grim, worried look. He was holding a paper in his hand.

“I have just received a letter from the abbot of Conques,” he said. “He discloses the name of the man to whom John has entrusted the command of the French soldiers and the responsibility for the safety of the legation. He is not a man of arms, he is not a man of the court, and he will be at the same time a member of the legation.”

“A rare combination of different qualities,” William said uneasily. “Who is it?”

“Bernard Gui, or Bernardo Guidoni, whichever you choose to call him.”

William made an ejaculation in his own language that I didn’t understand, nor did the abbot understand it, and perhaps it was best for us both, because the word William uttered had an obscene hissing sound.

“I don’t like this,” he added at once. “For years Bernard was the scourge of heretics in the Toulouse area, and he has written a Practica oficii inquisitionis heretice pravitatis for the use of those who must persecute and destroy Waldensians, Beghards, Fraticelli, and Dolcinians.”

“I know. I am familiar with the book; remarkably learned.”

“Remarkably learned,” William conceded. “He’s devoted to John, who in recent years has assigned him many missions in Flanders and here in northern Italy. And even when he was named Bishop of Galicia, he was never seen in his diocese but continued his activity as inquisitor. I thought he had now retired to the bishopric of Lodeve, but apparently John is recalling him to duty, right here in northern Italy. But why Bernard, of all people, and why with a command of soldiers …?”

“There is an answer,” the abbot said, “and it confirms all the fears I expressed to you yesterday. You know well — even if you will not admit it to me — that the positions on the poverty of Christ and of the church sustained by the chapter of Perugia, though supported by an abundance of theological arguments, are the same ones that many heretical movements sustain, much less prudently and in a much less orthodox fashion. It does not take much to demonstrate that the positions of Michael of Cesena, espoused by the Emperor, are the same as those of Ubertino and Angelus Clarenus. And up to this point, the two legations will concur. But Gui could do more, and he has the skill: he will try to insist that the theses of Perugia are the same as those of the Fraticelli, or the Pseudo Apostles.”

“This was foreseen. I mean, we knew that things would come to this, even without Bernard’s presence. At most Bernard will act more effectively than so many of those inept men of the curia, and the debate with him will necessarily be more subtle.”

“Yes,” the abbot said, “but at this point we come up against the question raised yesterday. If by tomorrow we have not discovered the person guilty of two, perhaps three, crimes, I must allow Bernard to exercise control over the abbey’s affairs. I cannot conceal from a man invested with the power Bernard will have (and because of our mutual agreement, we must not forget) that here in the abbey inexplicable events have taken place, are still taking place. Otherwise, the moment he finds out, the moment (God forbid) some new mysterious event happens, he will have every right to cry betrayal…”

“True,” William murmured, worried. “But there is nothing to be done. Perhaps it will be a good thing: Bernard occupied with the assassin will have less time to participate in the debate.”

“Bernard occupied with discovering the murderer will be a thorn in the side of my authority; remember that. This murky business obliges me for the first time to surrender a part of my power within these walls, and it is a new turn in the history not only of this abbey but of the Cluniac order itself. I would do anything to avoid it. Where is Berengar? What has happened to him? What are you doing?”

“I am only a monk who, a long time ago, conducted some effective inquisitorial investigations. You know that the truth is not to be found in two days. And after all, what power have you granted me? May I enter the library? May I ask all the questions I’d like, always supported by your authority?”

“I see no connection between the crimes and the library,” the abbot said angrily.

“Adelmo was an illuminator, Venantius a translator, Berengar the assistant librarian …” William explained patiently.

“In this sense all sixty monks have something to do with the library, as they have with the church. Why not investigate the church, then? Brother William, you are conducting an inquiry at my behest and within the limits I have established. For the rest, within this girdle of walls I am the only master after God, and by His grace. And this will hold true for Bernard as well. In any event,” he added, in a milder tone, “Bernard may not necessarily be coming here specifically for the meeting. The abbot of Conques writes me that the Pope has asked Cardinal Bertrand del Poggetto to come up from Bologna and assume command of the papal legation. Perhaps Bernard is coming here to meet the cardinal.”

“Which, in a broader perspective, would be worse. Bertrand is the scourge of heretics in central Italy. This encounter between the two champions of the battle against heretics may herald a vaster offensive in the country, eventually against the whole Franciscan movement…”

“And of this we will promptly inform the Emperor,” the abbot said, “but in this case the danger would not be immediate. We will be alert. Good-bye.”

William remained silent a moment as the abbot departed. Then he said to me: “First of all, Adso, we must try not to let ourselves be overcome by haste. Things cannot be solved rapidly when so many small, individual experiences have to be put together. I am going back to the laboratory, because in addition to keeping me from reading the manuscript, being without my lenses also makes it pointless for me to return tonight to the library.”

At that moment Nicholas of Morimondo came running toward us, bearer of very bad tidings. While he was trying to grind more finely the best lens, the one on which William had based such hope, it had broken. And another, which could perhaps have replaced it, had cracked as he was trying to insert it into the fork. Nicholas, disconsolately, pointed to the sky. It was already the hour of vespers, and darkness was falling. For that day no more work could be done. Another day lost, William acknowledged bitterly, suppressing (as he confessed to me afterward) the temptation to strangle the master glazier, though Nicholas was already sufficiently humiliated.

We left him to his humiliation and went to inquire about Berengar. Naturally, no one had found him.

We felt we had reached a dead end. We strolled awhile in the cloister, uncertain what to do next. But soon I saw William was lost in thought, staring into the air, as if he saw nothing. A bit earlier he had taken from his habit a twig of those herbs that I had seen him gather weeks before, and he was chewing it as if it gave him a kind of calm stimulus. In fact, he seemed absent, but every now and then his eyes brightened as if in the vacuum of his mind a new idea had kindled; then he would plunge once more into that singular and active hebetude of his. All of a sudden he said, “Of course, we could …”

“What?” I asked.

“I was thinking of a way to get our bearings in the labyrinth. It is not simple, but it would be effective… After all, the exit is in the east tower: this we know. Now, suppose that we had a machine that tells us where north is. What would happen?”

“Naturally, we would have only to turn to our right and we would be heading east. Or else it would suffice to go in the opposite direction and we would know we were going toward the south tower. But, even assuming such magic existed, the labyrinth is in fact a labyrinth, and as soon as we headed east we would come upon a wall that would prevent us from going straight, and we would lose our way again …” I observed.

“Yes, but the machine I am talking about would always point north, even if we had changed our route, and at every point it would tell us which way to turn.”

“It would be marvelous. But we would have to have this machine, and it would have to be able to recognize north at night and indoors, without being able to see the sun or the stars… And I believe not even your Bacon possessed such a machine.” I laughed.

“But you are wrong,” William said, “because a machine of the sort has been constructed, and some navigators have used it. It doesn’t need the stars or the sun, because it exploits the power of a marvelous stone, like the one we saw in Severinus’s infirmary, the one that attracts iron. And it was studied by Bacon and by a Picard wizard, Pierre of Maricourt, who described its many uses.”

“But could you construct it?”

“In itself, that wouldn’t be difficult. The stone can be used to produce many wonders, including a machine that moves perpetually without any external power, but the simplest discovery was described also by an Arab, Baylek al-Qabayaki. Take a vessel filled with water and set afloat in it a cork into which you have stuck an iron needle. Then pass the magnetic stone over the surface of the water, until the needle has acquired the same properties as the stone. And at this point the needle — though the stone would also have done it if it had had the capacity to move around a pivot — will turn and point north, and if you move it with the vessel, it will always turn in the direction of the north wind. Obviously, if you bear north in mind and also mark on the edge of the vessel the positions of east, south, and west, you will always know which way to turn in the library to reach the east tower.”

“What a marvel!” I exclaimed. “But why does the needle always point north? The stone attracts iron, I saw that, and I imagine that an immense quantity of iron attracts the stone. But then … then in the direction of the polestar, at the extreme confines of the globe, there exist great iron mines!”

“Someone, in fact, has suggested such is the case. Except that the needle doesn’t point precisely in the direction of the daystar, but toward the intersection of the celestial meridians. A sign that, as has been said, ‘hic lapis gerit in se similitudinem coeli,’ and the poles of the magnet receive their inclination from the poles of the sky, not from those of the earth. Which is a fine example of movement provoked at a distance, not by direct material causality: a problem that my friend John of Jandun is studying, when the Emperor does not ask him to make Avignon sink into the bowels of the earth…”

“Let’s go, then, and take Severinus’s stone, and a vessel, and some water, and a cork …” I said, excited.

“Wait a moment,” William said. “I do not know why, but I have never seen a machine that, however perfect in the philosophers’ description, is perfect in its mechanical functioning. Whereas a peasant’s billhook, which no philosopher has ever described, always functions as it should… I’m afraid that wandering around the labyrinth with a lamp in one hand, a vessel full of water in the other … Wait, though! I have another idea. The machine would point north even if we were outside the labyrinth, would it not?”

“Yes, but at that point it would be of no use to us, because we would have the sun and the stars …” I said.

“I know, I know. But if the machine functions both indoors and outdoors, why should it not be the same with our heads?”

“Our heads? Of course, they also function outside, and in fact, on the outside we know quite well the layout of the Aedificium! But it is when we are inside that we. become disoriented!”

“Precisely. But forget the machine for now. Thinking about the machine has led me to think about natural laws and the laws of thought. Here is the point: we must find, from the outside, a way of describing the Aedificium as it is inside…”

“But how?”

“We will use the mathematical sciences. Only in the mathematical sciences, as Averroes says, are things known to us identified with those known absolutely.”

“Then you do admit universal notions, you see.”

“Mathematical notions are propositions constructed by our intellect in such a way that they function always as truths, either because they are innate or because mathematics was invented before the other sciences. And the library was built by a human mind that thought in a mathematical fashion, because without mathematics you cannot build labyrinths. And therefore we must compare our mathematical propositions with the propositions of the builder, and from this comparison science can be produced, because it is a science of terms upon terms. And, in any case, stop dragging me into discussions of metaphysics. What the Devil has got into you today? Instead, you who have good eyes take a parchment, a tablet, something you can make signs on, and a stylus… Good, you have it? Good for you, Adso. Let’s go and take a turn around the Aedificium, while we still have a bit of light.”

So we took a long turn around the Aedificium. That is, from the distance we examined the east, south, and west towers, with the walls connecting them. The rest rose over the cliff, though for reasons of symmetry it could not be very different from what we were seeing.

And what we saw, William observed as he made me take precise notes on my tablet, was that each wall had two windows, and each tower five.

“Now, think,” my master said to me. “Each room we saw had a window…”

“Except those with seven sides,” I said.

“And, naturally, they are the ones in the center of each tower.”

“And except some others that we found without windows but that were not heptagonal.”

“Forget them. First let us find the rule, then we will try to explain the exceptions. So: we will have on the outside five rooms for each tower and two rooms for each straight wall, each room with a window. But if from a room with a window we proceed toward the interior of the Aedificium, we meet another room with a window. A sign that there are internal windows. Now, what shape is the internal well, as seen from the kitchen and from the scriptorium?”

“Octagonal,” I said.

“Excellent. And on each side of the octagon, there could easily be two windows. Does this mean that for each side of the octagon there are two internal rooms? Am I right?”

“Yes, but what about the windowless rooms?”

“There are eight in all. In fact, the internal room of every tower, with seven sides, has five walls that open each into one of the five rooms of the tower. What do the other two walls confine with? Not with rooms set along the outside walls, or there would be windows, and not with rooms along the octagon, for the same reason and because they would then be excessively long rooms. Try to draw a plan of how the library might look from above. You see that in each tower there must be two rooms that confine with the heptagonal room and open into two rooms that confine with the internal octagonal well.”

I tried drawing the plan that my master suggested, and I let out a cry of triumph. “But now we know everything! Let me count… The library has fifty-six rooms, four of them heptagonal and fifty-two more or less square, and of these, there are eight without windows, while twenty-eight look to the outside and sixteen to the interior!”

“And the four towers each have five rooms with four walls and one with seven… The library is constructed according to a celestial harmony to which various and wonderful meanings can be attributed…”

“A splendid discovery” I said, “but why is it so difficult to get our bearings?”

“Because what does not correspond to any mathematical law is the arrangement of the openings. Some rooms allow you to pass into several others, some into only one, and we must ask ourselves whether there are not rooms that do not allow you to go anywhere else. If you consider this aspect, plus the lack of light or of any clue that might be supplied by the position of the sun (and if you add the visions and the mirrors), you understand how the labyrinth can confuse anyone who goes through it, especially when he is already troubled by a sense of guilt. Remember, too, how desperate we were last night when we could no longer find our way. The maximum of confusion achieved with the maximum of order: it seems a sublime calculation. The builders of the library were great masters.”

“How will we orient ourselves, then?”

“At this point it isn’t difficult. With the map you’ve drawn, which should more or less correspond to the plan of the library, as soon as we are m the first heptagonal room we will move immediately to reach one of the blind rooms. Then, always turning right, after two or three rooms we should again be in a tower, which can only be the north tower, until we come to another blind room, on the left, which will confine with the heptagonal room, and on the right will allow us to rediscover a route similar to what I have just described, until we arrive at the west tower.”

“Yes, if all the rooms opened into all the other rooms …”

“In fact. And for this reason well need your map, to mark the blank walls on it, so we’ll know what detours were making. But it won’t be difficult.”

“But are we sure it will work?” I asked, puzzled; it all seemed too simple to me.

It will work, William replied. “But unfortunately we don’t know everything yet. We have learned how to avoid being lost. Now we must know whether there is a rule governing the distribution of the books among the rooms. And the verses from the Apocalypse tell us very little, not least because many are repeated identically in different rooms…”

“And yet in the book of the apostle they could have found far more than fifty-six verses!”

“Undoubtedly. Therefore only certain verses are good. Strange. As if they had had fewer than fifty: thirty or twenty … Oh, by the beard of Merlin!”

“Of whom?”

“Pay no attention. A magician of my country … They used as many verses as there are letters in the alphabet! Of course, that’s it! The text of the verse doesn’t count, it’s the initial letters that count. Each room is marked by a letter of the alphabet, and all together they make up some text that we must discover!”

“Like a figured poem, in the form of a cross or a fish!”

“More or less, and probably in the period when the library was built, that kind of poem was much in vogue.”

“But where does the text begin?”

“With a scroll larger than the others, in the heptagonal room of the entrance tower … or else … Why, of course, with the sentences in red!”

“But there are so many of them!”

“And therefore there must be many texts, or many words. Now make a better and larger copy of your map; while we visit the library, you will mark down with your stylus the rooms we pass through, the positions of the doors and walls (as well as the windows), and also the first letters of the verses that appear there. And like a good illuminator, you will make the letters in red larger.”

“But how does it happen,” I said with admiration, “that you were able to solve the mystery of the library looking at it from the outside, and you were unable to solve it when you were inside?”

“Thus God knows the world, because He conceived it in His mind, as if from the outside, before it was created, and we do not know its rule, because we live inside it, having found it already made.”

“So one can know things by looking at them from the outside!”

“The creations of art, because we retrace in our minds the operations of the artificer. Not the creations of nature, because they are not the work of our minds.”

“But for the library this suffices, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” William said. “But only for the library. Now let’s go and rest. I can do nothing until tomorrow morning, when I will have, I hope, my lenses. We might as well sleep, and rise early. I will try to reflect.”

“And supper?”

“Ah, of course, supper. The hour has passed by now. The monks are already at compline. But perhaps the kitchen is still open. Go look for something.”

“And steal it?”

“Ask. Ask Salvatore, who is now your friend.”

“But he will steal!”

“Are you perhaps your brother’s keeper?” William asked, with the words of Cain. But I saw he was joking and meant to say that God is great and merciful. And so I went looking for Salvatore and found him near the horses’ stalls.

“A fine animal,” I said, nodding at Brunellus, as a way of starting a conversation. “I would like to ride him.”

“No se puede. Abbonis est. But you do not need a pulcher horse to ride hard…” He pointed out a sturdy but ill-favored horse. “That one also suficit… Vide illuc, tertius equi…”

He wanted to point out to me the third horse. I laughed at his comical Latin. “And what will you do with that one?” I asked him.

And he told me a strange story. He said that any horse, even the oldest and weakest animal, could be made as swift as Brunellus. You had only to mix into his oats an herb called satirion, chopped fine, and then grease. his thighs with stag fat. Then you mount the horse, and before spurring him you turn his face eastward and you whisper into his ear, three times, the words: “Nicander, Melchior, and Merchizard,” And the horse will dash off and will go as far in one hour as Brunellus would in eight. And if you hang around his neck the teeth of a wolf that the horse himself has trampled and killed, the animal will not even feel the effort.

I asked him whether he had ever tried this. He said to me, coming closer circumspectly and whispering into my ear with his really foul breath, that it was very difficult, because satirion was now cultivated only by bishops and by their lordly friends, who used it to increase their power. Then I put an end to his talk and told him that this evening my master wanted’ to read certain books in his cell and wished to eat up there.

“I will do,” he said, “I will do cheese in batter.”

“How is that made?”

“Facilis. You take the cheese before it is too antiquum, without too much salis, and cut in cubes or sicut you like. And postea you put a bit of butierro or lardo to rechauffer over the embers. And in it you put two pieces of cheese, and when it becomes tenero, zucharum et cinnamon supra positurum du bis. And immediately take to table, because it must be ate caldo caldo.”

“Cheese in batter it is, then,” I said to him. And he vanished toward the kitchen, telling me to wait for him. He arrived half an hour later with a dish covered by a cloth. The aroma was good.

“Here,” he said to me, and he also held out a great lamp filled with oil.

“What for?” I asked.

“Sais pas, moi,” he said, slyly. “Peut-être your magister wants to go in dark place esta noche.”

Salvatore apparently knew more things than I had suspected. I inquired no further, but took the food to William. We ate, and I withdrew to my cell. Or at least, so I implied. I wanted to find Ubertino again, and stealthily I returned to the church.

AFTER COMPLINE

I found Ubertino at the statue of the Virgin. Silently I joined him and for a while pretended (I confess) to pray. Then I made bold to speak to him.

“Holy Father,” I said to him, “may I ask enlightenment and counsel of you?”

Ubertino looked at me and, taking me by the hand, rose and led me to a bench, where we both sat. He embraced me tightly, and I could feel his breath on my face.

“Dearest son,” he said, “anything this poor sinner can do for your soul will be done joyfully. What is distressing you? Yearnings?” he asked, almost with yearning himself. “The yearnings of the flesh?”

“No,” I replied, blushing, “if anything the yearnings of the mind, which wants to know too many things …”

“And that is bad. The Lord knows all things, and we must only adore His knowledge.”

“But we must also distinguish good from evil and understand human passions. I am a novice, but I will be monk and priest, and I must learn where evil lies, and what it looks like, in order to recognize it one day and teach others to recognize it.”

“This is true, my boy. What do you want to know, then?”

“The tare of heresy, Father,” I said with conviction. And then, all in one breath, “I have heard tell of a wicked man who has led others astray: Fra Dolcino.”

Ubertino remained silent, then he said: “That is right, you heard Brother William and me refer to him the other evening. But it is a nasty story, and it grieves me to talk about it, because it teaches (yes, in this sense you should know it, to derive a useful lesson from it) — because, I was saying, it teaches how the love of penance and the desire to purify the world can produce bloodshed and slaughter.” He shifted his position on the bench, relaxing his grasp of my shoulders but still keeping one hand on my neck, as if to communicate to me his knowledge or (I could not tell) his intensity.

“The story begins before Fra Dolcino,” he said, “more than sixty years ago, when I was a child. It was in Parma. There a certain Gherardo Segarelli began preaching, exhorting all to a life of penitence, and he would go along the roads crying ‘Penitenziagite!’ which was the uneducated man’s way of saying ‘Penitentiam agite, appropinquabit enim regnum coelorum.’ He enjoined his disciples to imitate the apostles, and he chose to call his sect the order of the Apostles, and his men were to go through the world like poor beggars, living only on alms…”

“Like the Fraticelli,” I said. “Wasn’t this the command of our Lord and of your own Francis?”

“Yes,” Ubertino admitted with a slight hesitation in his voice, sighing. “But perhaps Gherardo exaggerated. He and his followers were accused of denying the authority of the priests and the celebration of Mass and confession, and of being idle vagabonds.”

“But the Spiritual Franciscans were accused of the same thing. And aren’t the Minorites saying today that the authority of the Pope should not be recognized?”

“Yes, but not the authority of priests. We Minorites are ourselves priests. It is difficult, boy, to make distinctions in these things. The line dividing good from evil is so fine… In some way Gherardo erred and became guilty of heresy… He asked to be admitted to the order of the Minorites, but our brothers would not receive him. He spent his days in the church of our brothers, and he saw the paintings there of the apostles wearing sandals on their feet and cloaks wrapped around their shoulders, and so he let his hair and beard grow, put sandals on his feet, and wore the rope of the Friars Minor, because anyone who wants to found a new congregation always takes something from the order of the Blessed Francis.”

“Then he was in the right…”

“But somewhere he did wrong… Dressed in a white cloak over a white tunic, with his hair long, he acquired among simple people the reputation for saintliness. He sold a little house of his, and having received the money, he stood on a stone from which in ancient times the magistrates were accustomed to harangue, and he held the little sack of gold pieces in his hand, and he did not scatter them or give them to the poor, but, after summoning some rogues dicing nearby, he flung the money in their midst and said, ‘Let him take who will,’ and those rogues took the money and went off to gamble it away, and they blasphemed the living God, and he who had given to them heard and did not blush.”

“But Francis also stripped himself of everything, and today from William I heard that he went to preach to ravens and hawks, as well as to the lepers — namely, to the dregs that the people who call themselves virtuous had cast out…”

“Yes, but Gherardo somehow erred; Francis never set himself in conflict with the holy church, and the Gospel says to give to the poor, not to rogues. Gherardo gave and received nothing in return because he had given to bad people, and he had a bad beginning, a bad continuation, and a bad end, because his congregation was disapproved by Pope Gregory the Tenth.

“Perhaps,” I said, “he was a less broad-minded pope than the one who approved the Rule of Francis…”

“He was, but Gherardo somehow erred, and Francis, on the contrary, knew well what he was doing. And finally, boy, these keepers of pigs and cows who suddenly became Pseudo Apostles wanted to live blissfully and without sweat off the alms of those whom the Friars Minor had educated with such efforts and such heroic examples of poverty! But that is not the point,” he added promptly. “The point is that to resemble the apostles, who had still been Jews, Gherardo Segarelli had himself circumcised, which is contrary to the words of Paul to the Galatians — and you know that many holy persons proclaim that the future Antichrist will come from the race of the circumcised… But Gherardo did still worse: he went about collecting the simple people and saying, ‘Come with me into the vineyard,’ and those who did not know him went with him into another’s vineyard, believing it his, and they ate another’s grapes…”

“Surely the Minorites didn’t defend private property,” I said impertinently.

Ubertino stared at me severely. “The Minorites ask to be poor, but they have never asked others to be poor. You cannot attack the property of good Christians with impunity; the good Christians will label you a bandit. And so it happened to Gherardo. They said of him finally that to test his strength of will and his continence he slept with women without having carnal knowledge of them; but when his disciples tried to imitate him, the results were quite different… Oh, these are not things a boy should know: the female is a vessel of the Devil… And then they began to brawl among themselves over the command of the sect, and evil things happened. And yet many came to Gherardo, not only peasants, but also people of the city, members of the guilds, and Gherardo made them strip themselves so that, naked, they could follow the naked Christ, and he sent them out into the world to preach, but he had a sleeveless tunic made for himself, white, of strong stuff, and in this garb he looked more like a clown than like a religious! They lived in the open air, but sometimes they climbed into the pulpits of the churches, disturbing the assembly of devout folk and driving out their preachers, and once they set a child on the bishop’s throne in the Church of Sant’Orso in Ravenna. And they proclaimed themselves heirs of the doctrine of Joachim of Floris…”

“But so do the Franciscans,” I said, “and also Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, and you, too!” I cried.

“Calm yourself, boy. Joachim of Floris was a great prophet and he was the first to understand that Francis would begin a renewal of the church. But the Pseudo Apostles used his doctrine to justify their follies. Segarelli took with him a female apostle, one Tripia or Ripia, who claimed to have the gift of prophecy. A woman, you understand?”

“But, Father,” I tried to counter, “the other evening you yourself spoke of the saintliness of Clare of Montefalco and Angela of Foligno…”

“They were saints! They lived in humility, recognizing the power of the church; they never claimed the gift of prophecy! But the Pseudo Apostles asserted that women could go preaching from city to city, as many other heretics also said. And they recognized no difference among the wed and the unwed, nor was any vow considered perpetual. In short, not to weary you too much with very sad stories whose subtleties you cannot understand well, Bishop Obizzo of Parma finally decided to put Gherardo in irons. But here a strange thing happened that tells you how weak is human nature, and how insidious the weed of heresy. Because in the end the bishop freed Gherardo and received him at his own table, and laughed at his japes, and kept him as his buffoon.”

“But why?”

“I do not know — or, rather, I fear I do know. The bishop was a nobleman and did not like the merchants and craftsmen of the city. Perhaps he did not mind Gherardo’s preaching against them with his talk of poverty, or did not care that from begging for alms Gherardo proceeded to robbery. But in the end the Pope. intervened, and the bishop resumed his proper seventy, and Gherardo ended on the pyre as an impenitent heretic. It was at the beginning of this century.”

“And what do these things have to do with Fra Dolcino?”

“They are connected, and this shows you how heresy survives even the destruction of the heretics. This Dolcino was a priest’s bastard, living in the Novara diocese, this part of Italy, a bit farther north. He was a youth of sharp mind and he was educated in letters, but he stole from the priest who housed him and fled eastward, to the city of Trent. And there he resumed the preaching of Gherardo, but in a more heretical vein, declaring that he was the only true apostle of God and that everything should be common in love, and that it was licit to lie indiscriminately with all women, whereby no one could be accused of concubinage, even if he went with both a wife and a daughter…”

“Did he truly preach those things, or was he just accused of preaching them? I have heard that the Spirituals, like those monks of Montefalco, were accused of similar crimes…”

“De hoc satis,” Ubertino interrupted me sharply. “They were no longer monks. They were heretics. And befouled by Fra Dolcino himself. And, furthermore, listen to me: it is enough to know what Fra Dolcino did afterward to call him a wicked man. How he became familiar with the Pseudo Apostles’ teachings, I do not even know. Perhaps he went through Parma as a youth and heard Gherardo. It is known that in the Bologna region he kept in touch with those heretics after Segarelli’s death. And it is known for certain that he began his preaching at Trent. There he seduced a very beautiful maiden of noble family, Margaret, or she seduced him, as Heloise seduced Abelard, because — never forget — it is through woman that the Devil penetrates men’s hearts! At that point, the Bishop of Trent drove him from the diocese, but by then Dolcino had gathered more than a thousand followers, and he began a long march, which took him back to the area where he was born. And along the way other deluded folk joined him, seduced by his words, and perhaps he was also joined by many Waldensian heretics who lived in the mountains he passed through, or he himself wanted to join the Waldensians of these lands to the north. When he reached the Novara region, Dolcino found a situation favorable to his revolt, cause the vassals governing the town of Gattinara in the name of the Bishop of Vercelli had been driven out by the populace, who then welcomed Dolcino’s outlaws as their worthy allies.”

“What had the bishop’s vassals done?”

“I do not know, and it is not my place to judge. But as you see, heresy in many cases is wed to the revolt against overlords, and this is why the heretic begins by preaching Madonna Poverty and then falls prey to all the temptations of power, war, violence. There was a conflict among certain families in the city of Vercelli, and the Pseudo Apostles took advantage of it, and these families exploited the disorder brought by the Pseudo Apostles. The feudal lords hired mercenaries to rob the citizens, and the citizens sought the protection of the Bishop of Novara.”

“What a complicated story. But whose side was Dolcino on?”

“I do not know; he was a faction unto himself; he entered into all these disputes and saw them as an opportunity for preaching the struggle against private ownership in the name of poverty. Dolcino and his followers, who were now three thousand strong, camped on a hill near Novara known as Bald Mountain, and they built hovels and fortifications, and Dolcino ruled over that whole throng of men and women, who lived in the most shameful promiscuity. From there he sent letters to his faithful in which he expounded his heretical doctrine. He said and he wrote that their ideal was poverty and they were not bound by any vow of external obedience, and that he, Dolcino, had been sent by God to break the seals of the prophecies and to understand the writings of the Old and the New Testaments. And he called secular clerics — preachers and Minorites — ministers of the Devil, and he absolved everyone from the duty of obeying them. And he identified four ages in the life of the people of God: The first was that of the Old Testament, the patriarchs and prophets, before the coming of Christ, when marriage was good because God’s people had to multiply. The second was the age of Christ and the apostles, and this was the epoch of saintliness and chastity. Then came the third, when the popes had first to accept earthly riches in order to govern the people; but when mankind began to stray from the love of God, Benedict came, and spoke against all temporal possessions. When the monks of Benedict also then went back to accumulating wealth, the monks of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic came, even more stern than Benedict in preaching against earthly power and riches. But finally now, when again the lives of so many prelates were contradicting all those good precepts, we had reached the end of the third age, and it was necessary to follow the teachings of the Apostles.”

“Then Dolcino was preaching the things that the Franciscans had preached, and among the Franciscans, the Spirituals in particular, and you yourself, Father!”

“Ah, yes, but he derived a perfidious syllogism from them! He said that to bring to an end this third age of corruption, all the clergy, monks, and friars had to die a very cruel death; he said that all prelates of the church, all clerics, nuns, religious male and female, all those who belong to the preaching orders and the Minorites, the hermits, and even Boniface the Pope had to be exterminated by the Emperor he, Dolcino, had chosen, and this was to be Frederick of Sicily.”

“But didn’t that same Frederick receive with favor in Sicily the Spirituals expelled from Umbria, and isn’t it the Minorites who ask that the Emperor, though he is now Louis, destroy the temporal power of the Pope and the cardinals?”

“It is characteristic of heresy, or of madness, that it transforms the most upright thoughts and aims them at consequences contrary to the law of God and man. The Minorites have never asked the Emperor to kill other priests.

He was mistaken, I know now. Because, a few months later, when the Bavarian established his own order in Rome, Marsilius and other Minorites did to religious who were faithful to the Pope exactly what Dolcino had asked to have done. By this I don’t mean that Dolcino was right; if anything, Marsilius was equally wrong. But I was beginning to wonder, especially after that afternoon’s conversation with William, if it were possible for the simple people who followed Dolcino to distinguish between the promises of the Spirituals and Dolcino’s enactment of them. Was he not perhaps guilty of putting into practice what presumably orthodox men had preached, in a purely mystical fashion? Or was that perhaps where the difference lay? Did holiness consist to waiting for God to give us what His saints had promised, without trying to obtain it through earthly means? Now I know this is the case and I know why Dolcino was in error: the order of things must not be transformed, even if we must fervently hope for its transformation. But that evening I was in the grip of contradictory thoughts.

“Finally,” Ubertino was saying to me, “you always find the mark of heresy in pride. In a second letter, to the year 1303, Dolcino appointed himself supreme head of the Apostolic congregation, and named as his lieutenants the perfidious Margaret — a woman — and Longinus of Bergamo, Frederick of Novara, Albert Carentinus, and Walderic of Brescia. And he began raving about a sequence of future popes, two good — the first and the last — and two wicked, the second and the third. The first is Celestine, the second is Boniface the Eighth, of whom the prophets say, ‘The pride of your heart has dishonored you, O you who live in the fissures of cliffs.’ The third Pope is not named, but of him Jeremiah is supposed to have said, ‘There, like a lion.’ And — infamy! — Dolcino recognized the lion in Frederick of Sicily. For Dolcino the fourth Pope was still unknown, and he was to be the Sainted Pope, the Angelic Pope of whom the abbot Joachim spoke. He would be chosen by God, and then Dolcino and all his people (who at this point were already four thousand) would receive together the grace of the Holy Spirit, and it would renew the church until the end of the world. But in the three years preceding his coming, all evil would have to be consummated. And this Dolcino tried to do, carrying war everywhere. And the fourth pope, and here you see how the Devil mocks his familiars, was in fact Clement the Fifth, who proclaimed the crusade against Dolcino. And it was right, because in his letters at this point Dolcino sustained theories that could not be reconciled with orthodoxy. He declared the Roman church a whore, said that obedience is not due priests, that all spiritual power had now passed to the sect of the Apostles, that only the Apostles represented the new church, the Apostles could annul matrimony, no one would be saved unless he was a member of the sect, no pope could absolve sin, tithes should not be paid, a more perfect life was lived without vows than with vows, and a consecrated church was worthless for prayer, no better than a stable, and Christ could be worshiped both in the woods and in the churches.”

“Did he really say these things?”

“Of course, this is certain. He wrote them. But unfortunately he did still worse. After he had settled on Bald Mountain, he began sacking the villages in the valley, raiding them to procure provisions — waging outright war, in short, against the nearby towns.”

“Were all opposed to him?”

“We do not know. Perhaps he received support from some; I told you that he had involved himself in the snarled knot of local dissensions. Meanwhile winter had come, the winter of the year 1305, one of the harshest in recent decades, and there was great famine all around. Dolcino sent a third letter to his followers, and many more joined him, but on that hill life had become intolerable, and they otter so hungry that they ate the flesh of horses and other animals, and boiled hay. And many died.”

“But whom were they fighting against now?”

“The Bishop of Vercelli had appealed to Clement the Fifth, and a crusade had been called against the heretics. A plenary indulgence was granted to anyone taking part in it, and Louis of Savoy, the inquisitors of Lombardy, the Archbishop of Milan were prompt to act. Many took up the cross to aid the people of Vercelli and Novara, even from Savoy, Provence, France; and the Bishop of Vercelli was the supreme commander. There were constant clashes between the vanguards of the two armies, but Dolcino’s fortifications were impregnable, and somehow the wicked received help.”

“From whom?”

“From other wicked men, I believe, who were happy to foment this disorder. Toward the end of the year 1305, the heresiarch was forced, however, to abandon Bald Mountain, leaving behind the wounded and ill, and he moved into the territory of Trivero, where he entrenched himself on a mountain that was called Zubello at the time and later was known as Rubello or Rebello, because it had become the fortress of the rebels of the church. In any case, I cannot tell you everything that happened. There were terrible massacres, but in the end the rebels were forced to surrender, Dolcino and his people were captured, and they rightly ended up on the pyre.”

“The beautiful Margaret, too?”

Ubertino looked at me, “So you remembered she was beautiful? She was beautiful, they say, and many local lords tried to make her their bride to save her from the stake. But she would not have it; she died impenitent with her impenitent lover. And let this be a lesson to you: beware of the whore of Babylon, even when she assumes the form of the most exquisite creature.”

“But now tell me., Father: I have learned that the cellarer of the convent, and perhaps also Salvatore, met Dolcino and were with him in some way…”

“Be silent! Do not utter rash statements. I found the cellarer in a convent of Minorites. I do not know where Remigio had been before that. I know he was always a good monk, at least from the standpoint of orthodoxy. As for the rest, alas, the flesh is weak…”

“What do you mean?”

“These are not things you should know.” He drew me close again, embracing me and pointing to the statue of the Virgin. “You must be introduced to the immaculate love. There is she in whom femininity is sublimated. This is why you may call her beautiful, like the beloved in the Song of Songs. In her,” he said, his face carried away by an inner rapture, like the abbot’s the day before when he spoke of gems and the gold of his vessels, “in her, even the body’s grace is a sign of the beauties of heaven, and this is why the sculptor has portrayed her with all the graces that should adorn a woman.” He pointed to the Virgin’s slender bust, held high and tight by a cross-laced bodice, which the Child’s tiny hands fondled. “You see? As the doctors have said Beautiful also are the breasts, which protrude slightly, only faintly tumescent, and do not swell licentiously, suppressed but not depressed… What do you feel before this sweetest of visions?”

I blushed violently, feeling myself stirred as if by an inner fire. Ubertino must have realized it, or perhaps he glimpsed my flushed cheeks, for he promptly added, “But you must learn to distinguish the fire of supernatural love from the raving of the senses. It is difficult even for the saints.”

“But how can the good love be recognized?” I asked, trembling.

“What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss. And I believe that without Margaret’s seductions Dolcino would not have damned himself, and without the reckless and promiscuous life on Bald Mountain, fewer would have felt the lure of his rebellion. Mind you, I do not say these things to you only about evil love, which of course all must shun as a thing of the Devil; I say this also, and with great fear, of the good love between God and man, between man and his neighbor. It often happens that two or three people, men or women, love one another quite cordially and harbor reciprocal, special fondness, and desire to live always close, and what one party wishes, the other desires. And I confess that I felt something of the kind for most virtuous women, like Angela and Clare. Well, that, too, is blameworthy, even though it is spiritual and conceived in God’s name… Because even the love felt by the soul, if it is not forearmed, if it is felt warmly, then falls, or proceeds in disorder. Oh, love has various properties: first the soul grows tender, then it sickens … but then it feels the true warmth of divine love and cries out and moans and becomes as stone flung in the forge to melt into lime, and it crackles, licked by the flame…”

“And this is good love?”

Ubertino stroked my head, and as I looked at him, I saw his eyes melt with tears. “Yes, this, finally, is good love.” He took his hand from my shoulder. But how difficult it is,” he added, “how difficult it is to distinguish it from the other. And sometimes when devils tempt your soul you feel like the man hanged by the neck who, with his hands tied behind him and his eyes blindfolded, remains hanging on the gallows and yet lives, with no help, no support, no remedy, swinging in the empty air…”

His face was bathed not only with tears but also by a faint perspiration. “Go now,” he said to me quickly. “I have told you what you wanted to know, On this side the choir of angels; on that, the gaping maw of hell. Go, and the Lord be praised.” He prostrated himself again before the Virgin, and I heard him sobbing softly. He was praying.

I did not leave the church. The talk with Ubertino had kindled in my spirit, and in my viscera, a strange fire and an unspeakable restlessness. Perhaps for this reason, I felt inclined to disobedience and decided to return to the library alone. I myself didn’t know what I was looking for. I wanted to explore an unknown place on my own; I was fascinated by the idea of being able to orient myself there without my master’s help. I climbed the stairs as Dolcino had climbed up Monte Rubello.

I had the lamp with me (why had I brought it — was I perhaps already harboring this secret plan?) and I entered the ossarium almost with my eyes closed. In no time I was in the scriptorium. It was a fatal evening, I believe, because as I was wandering among the desks, I glimpsed one on which lay an open manuscript that a monk had been copying: Historia fratris Dulcini Heresiarche. I believe it was the desk of Peter of Sant’Albano, who I had been told was writing a monumental history of heresy (after what happened in the abbey, he naturally gave up writing it — but we must not get ahead of the story). So it was therefore normal that the text should be there, and with it others on kindred subjects, on the Patarines and the flagellants. But I took this circumstance as a supernatural sign, whether celestial or diabolical I still cannot say, and I bent eagerly to read the writing. It was not very long, and I found there also what Ubertino had not told me, obviously recounted by one who had seen all and whose imagination was still inflamed by it.

I learned then how, in March of 1307, on Holy Saturday, Dolcino, Margaret, and Longinus, captured at last, were taken into the city of Biella and handed over to the bishop, who was awaiting the decision of the Pope. The Pope, hearing the news, transmitted it to King Philip of France, writing: “We have received most welcome news, rich in joy and exultation, for that pestiferous demon, son of Belial, the most horrendous heresiarch Dolcino, after many dangers, long efforts, massacres, and frequent battles, is finally incarcerated with his followers in our prisons, thanks to our venerated brother Ranier, Bishop of Vercelli, captured on the day of the Lord’s holy supper; and numerous people who were with him, infected by the contagion, were killed that same day.” The Pope was merciless toward the prisoners and ordered the bishop to put them to death. Then, in July of that same year, the first day of the month, the heretics were handed over to the secular arm. As the bells of the city rang joyously, the heretics were placed in a wagon, surrounded by the executioners, followed by the militia, and carried through the entire city, and at every corner, men with red-hot pincers tore the flesh of the guilty. Margaret was burned first, before Dolcino, who did not move a muscle of his face, just as he had not uttered a moan when the pincers bit into his limbs. Then the wagon continued on its way, while the executioners thrust their irons into pots filled with glowing coals. Dolcino underwent other torments and remained silent, though when they amputated his nose he shrugged a bit, and when they tore off his male member he emitted a long sigh, like a groan. The last things he said sounded impertinent, for he warned that he would rise on the third day. Then he was burned and his ashes were scattered in the wind.

I folded the manuscript with trembling hands. Dolcino had committed many crimes, I had been told, but he had been horribly burned to death. And at the stake he had behaved … how? With the steadfastness of martyrs or with the arrogance of the damned? As I staggered up the steps to the library, I realized why I was so upset. I suddenly recalled a scene I had witnessed not many months before, shortly after my arrival in Tuscany. I wondered, indeed, why I had almost forgotten it till then, as if my sick soul had wanted to erase a memory that weighed on me like a nightmare. Or, rather, I had not forgotten it, because every time I heard the Fraticelli discussed, I saw again the scenes of that event, but I immediately thrust them down into the recesses of my spirit, as if witnessing that horror had been a sin.

I had first heard talk of the Fraticelli in the days when, in Florence, I had seen one burned at the stake. It was shortly before I met Brother William in Pisa. He had delayed his arrival in that city, and my father had given me leave to visit Florence, whose churches I had heard praised as most beautiful. I wandered about Tuscany, to learn better the vulgar Italian tongue, and I finally stayed a week in Florence, because I had heard much talk of that city and wished to know it.

And so it was that when I had barely arrived I learned of a great trial that was stirring up the whole city. A heretic Fraticello, accused of crimes against religion and haled before the bishop and other ecclesiastics, was being subjected to severe inquisition at the time. And, following those who told me about it, I went to the place where the trial was taking place, for I heard the people say that this friar, Michael by name, was truly a very pious man who had preached penance and poverty, repeating the words of Saint Francis, and had been brought before the judges because of the spitefulness of certain women who, pretending to confess themselves to him, had then attributed heretical notions to him; and he had indeed been seized by the bishop’s men in the house of those same women, a fact that amazed me, because a man of the church should never go to administer the sacraments in such unsuitable places; but this seemed to be a weakness of the Fraticelli, this failure to take propriety into due consideration, and perhaps there was some truth in the popular belief that held them to be not only heretics but also of dubious behavior (as it was always said of the Catharists that they were Bulgars and sodomites).

I came to the Church of San Salvatore, where the inquisition was in progress, but I could not enter, because of the great crowd outside it. However, some had hoisted themselves to the bars of the windows and, clinging there, could see and hear what was going on, and they reported it to those below. The inquisitors were reading to Brother Michael the confession he had made the day before, in which he said that Christ and his apostles “held nothing individually or in common as property,” but Michael protested that the notary had now added “many false consequences” and he shouted (this I heard from outside), “You will have to defend yourselves on the day of judgment!” But the inquisitors read the confession as they had drawn it up, and at the end they asked him whether he wanted humbly to follow the opinions of the church and all the people of the city. And I heard Michael shouting in a loud voice that he wanted to follow what he believed, namely that he “wanted to keep Christ poor and crucified, and Pope John XXII was a heretic because he said the opposite.” A great debate ensued, in which the inquisitors, many of them Franciscans, sought to make him understand that the Scriptures had not said what he was saying, and he accused them of denying the very Rule of their order, and they assailed him, asking him whether he thought he understood Scripture better than they, who were masters. And Fra Michael, very stubborn indeed, contested them, so that they began provoking him with such assertions as “Then we want you to consider Christ a property owner and Pope John a Catholic and holy man.” And Michael, never faltering, said, “No, a heretic.” And they said they had never seen anyone so tenacious in his own wickedness. But among the crowd outside the building I heard many compare him to Christ before the Pharisees, and I realized that among the people many believed in the holiness of the friar Michael.

Finally the bishop’s men took him back to prison in irons. And that evening I was told that many monks, friends of the bishop, had gone to insult him and enjoin him to retract, but he answered like a man sure of his own truth. And he repeated to each of them that Christ was poor and that Saint Francis and Saint Dominic had said so as well, and that if for professing this upright opinion he had to be condemned to the stake, so much the better, because in a short time he would be able to see what the Scriptures describe, the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse and Jesus Christ and Saint Francis and the glorious martyrs. And I was told that he said, “If we read with such fervor the doctrine of certain sainted abbots, how much greater should be our fervor and our joy in desiring to be in their midst?” And after words of this sort, the inquisitors left the prison with grim faces, crying out in indignation (and I heard them), “He has a devil in him!”

The next day we learned that the sentence had been pronounced; I went to the bishop’s palace, where I could see the parchment, and I copied a part of it onto my tablet.

It began “In nomine Domini amen. Hec est quedam condemnatio corporalis et sententia condemnationis corporalis lata, data et in hiis scriptis sententialiter pronumptiata et promulgata…” etc., and it went on with a stern description of the sins and crimes of the said Michael; among these one seemed to me most foul, even if I do not know (considering the conduct of the trial) whether he really affirmed this, but it was said, in short, that the aforementioned Minorite had proclaimed that Saint Thomas Aquinas was not a saint nor did he enjoy eternal salvation, but was, on the contrary, damned and in a state of perdition! And the sentence concluded, establishing the punishment, since the accused would not mend his ways:

And after the sentence had been made public, more men of the church came to the prison and warned Michael of what would happen, and I heard them say then, “Brother Michael, the miters and copes have already been made, and painted on them are Fraticelli accompanied by devils.” To frighten him and force him finally to retract. But Brother Michael knelt down and said, “I believe that beside the pyre there will be our father Francis, and I further believe there will be Jesus and the apostles, and the glorious martyrs Bartholomew and Anthony.” Which was a way of refusing for the last time the inquisitors’ offers.

The next morning I, too, was on the bridge before the bishop’s palace, where the inquisitors had gathered; Brother Michael, still in irons, was brought to face them. One of his faithful followers knelt before him to receive his benediction, and this follower was seized by the men-at-arms and taken at once to prison. Afterward, the inquisitors again read the sentence to the condemned man and asked him once more whether he wished to repent. At every point where the sentence said he was a heretic Michael replied, “I am no heretic; a sinner, yes, but Catholic,” and when the text named “the most venerable and holy Pope John XXII” Michael answered, “No, a heretic.” Then the bishop ordered Michael to come and kneel before him, and Michael said no one should kneel before heretics. They forced him to his knees and he murmured, “God will pardon me.” And after he had been led out in all his priestly vestments, a ritual began, and one by one his vestments were stripped away until he remained in that little garment that the Florentines call a “cioppa.” And as is the custom when a priest is defrocked, they seared the pads of his fingers with a hot iron and they shaved his head. Then he was handed over to the captain and his men, who treated him very harshly and put him in irons, to take him back to prison, as he said to the crowd, “Per Dominum moriemur.” He was to be burned, as I found out, only the next day. And on this day they also went to ask him whether he wished to confess himself and receive communion. And he refused, saying it was a sin to accept the sacraments from one in a state of sin. Here, I believe, he was wrong, and he showed he had been corrupted by the heresy of the Patarines.

Finally it was the day of the execution, and a gonfalonier came for him, appearing friendly, for he asked what sort of man Michael was and why he was so stubborn when he had only to affirm what the whole populace affirmed and accept the opinion of Holy Mother Church. But Michael, very harshly, said, “I believe in Christ poor and crucified.” And the gonfalonier went away, making a helpless gesture. Then the captain arrived with his men and took Michael into the courtyard, where the bishop’s vicar reread the confession and the sentence to him. Michael interrupted again to contest opinions falsely attributed to him; these truly were matters of such subtlety that I do not recall them, and at that time did not understand them clearly. But these were surely what decided the death of Michael and the persecution of the Fraticelli. I did not understand why the men of the church and of the secular arm were so violent against people who wanted to live in poverty and held that Christ had not owned worldly goods. Because, I said to myself, if anything, they should fear men who wish to live in wealth and take money away from others, and lead the church into sin and introduce simoniacal practices into it. And I spoke of this with a man standing near me, for I could not keep silent any more. He smiled mockingly and said to me that a monk who practices poverty sets a bad example for the populace, for then they cannot accept monks who do not practice it. And, he added, the preaching of poverty put the wrong ideas into the heads of the people, who would consider their poverty a source of pride, and pride can lead to many proud acts. And, finally, he said that I should know, thanks to some syllogism which was not clear to him, either, that preaching poverty for monks put you on the side of the Emperor, and this did not please the Pope. All excellent reasons, they seemed to me, even if expounded by a man of scant learning, except that at this point I did not understand why Brother Michael wanted to die so horribly to please the Emperor, or to settle a controversy among religious orders. And in fact some of those present were saying, “He is not a saint, he was sent by Louis to stir up discord among the citizens, and the Fraticelli are Tuscans but behind them are the Emperor’s agents.” And others said, “He is a madman, he is possessed by the Devil, swollen with pride, and he enjoys martyrdom for his wicked pride; they make these monks read too many lives of the saints, it would be better for them to take a wife!” And still others added, “No, all Christians should be like him, ready to proclaim their faith, as in the time of the pagans.” As I listened to those voices, no longer knowing what to think myself, it so happened that I looked straight at the condemned man’s face, which at times was hidden by the crowd ahead of me. And I saw the face of a man looking at something that is not of this earth, as I had sometimes seen on statues of saints in ecstatic vision. And I understood that, madman or seer as he might be, he knowingly wanted to die because he believed that in dying he would defeat his enemy, whoever it was. And I understood that his example would lead others to death. And I remain amazed by the possessors of such steadfastness only because I do not know, even today, whether what prevails in them is a proud love of the truth they believe, which leads them to death, or a proud desire for death, which leads them to proclaim their truth, whatever it may be. And I am overwhelmed with admiration and fear.

But let us go back to the execution, for now all were heading for the place where Michael would be put to death.

The captain and his men brought him out of the gate, with his little skirt on him and some of the buttons undone, and as he walked with a broad stride and a bowed head, reciting his office, he seemed one of the martyrs. And the crowd was unbelievably large and many cried, “Do not die!” and he would answer, “I want to die for Christ.” “But you are not dying for Christ,” they said to him; and he said, “No, for the truth.” When they came to a place called the Proconsul’s Corner, one man cried to him to pray to God for them all, and he blessed the crowd.

At the Church of the Baptist they shouted to him, “Save your life!” and he answered, “Run for your life from sin!”; at the Old Market they shouted to him, “Live, live!” and he replied, “Save yourselves from hell”; at the New Market they yelled, “Repent, repent,” and he replied, “Repent of your usury.” And on reaching Santa Croce, he saw the monks of his order on the steps, and he reproached them because they did not follow the Rule of Saint Francis. And some of them shrugged, but others pulled their cowls over their faces to cover them, in shame.

And going toward the Justice Gate, many said to him, “Recant! Recant! Don’t insist on dying,” and he said, “Christ died for us.” And they said, “But you are not Christ, you must not die for us!” And he said, “But I want to die for Him.” At the Field of justice, one said to him he should do as a certain monk, his superior, had done, abjuring; but Michael answered that he would not abjure, and I saw many in the crowd, agree and urge Michael to be strong: so I and many others realized those were his followers, and we moved away from them.

Finally we were outside the city and before us the pyre appeared, the “hut,” as they called it there, because the wood was arranged in the form of a hut, and there a circle of armed horsemen formed, to keep people from coming too close. And there they bound Brother Michael to the stake. And again I heard someone shout to him, “But what is it you’re dying for?” And he answered; “For a truth that dwells in me, which I can proclaim only by death.” They set fire to the wood. And Brother Michael, who had chanted the “Credo,” afterward chanted the “Te Deum.” He sang perhaps eight verses of it, then he bent over as if he had to sneeze, and fell to the ground, because his bonds had burned away. He was already dead: before the body is completely burned it has already died from the great heat, which makes the heart explode, and from the smoke that fills the chest.

Then the hut burned entirely, like a torch, and there was a great glow, and if it had not been for the poor charred body of Michael, still glimpsed among the glowing coals, I would have said I was standing before the burning bush. And I was close enough to have a view (I recalled as I climbed the steps of the library) that made some words rise spontaneously to my lips, about ecstatic rapture; I had read them in the books of Saint Hildegard: “The flame consists of a splendid clarity, of an unusual vigor, and of an igneous ardor, but possesses the splendid clarity that it may illuminate and the igneous ardor that it may burn.”

I remembered some words of Ubertino about love. The image of Michael on the pyre became confused with that of Dolcino, and that of Dolcino with that of the beautiful Margaret. I felt again the restlessness that had seized me in church.

I tried not to think about it and headed straight for the labyrinth.

This was the first time I entered it alone; the long shadows cast by the lamp on the floor terrified me as much as had the visions the previous night. At every moment I feared I would find myself before another mirror, because the magic of mirrors is such that even when you know they are mirrors they still upset you.

On the other hand, I did not try to orient myself, or to avoid the room with the perfumes that induce visions. I proceeded as if in the grip of a fever, nor did I know where I wanted to go. In fact, I did not move far from my starting point, because a short time later I found myself again in the heptagonal room by which I had entered. Here, on a table, some books were laid out that I did not seem to have seen the night before. I guessed they were works that Malachi had withdrawn from the scriptorium and had not yet replaced on their proper shelves. I could not comprehend how far I was from the perfume room, because I felt dazed, which could be the effect of some effluvium that reached even that spot, or else of the things I had been pondering until then. I opened a richly illuminated volume that, by its style, seemed to me to come from the monasteries of Ultima Thule.

On a page where the holy Gospel of the apostle Mark began, I was struck by the image of a lion. I was certain it was a lion, even though I had never seen one in the flesh, and the artist had reproduced its features faithfully, inspired perhaps by the sight of the lions of Hibernia, land of monstrous creatures, and I was convinced that this animal, as for that matter the Physiologus says, concentrates in itself all the characteristics of the things at once most horrible and most regal. So that image suggested to me both the image of the Enemy and that of Christ our Lord, nor did I know by what symbolic key I was to read it, and I was trembling all over, out of fear and also because of the wind coming through the fissures in the walls.

The lion I saw had a mouth bristling with teeth, and a finely armored head like a serpent’s; the immense body was supported by four paws with sharp, fierce claws, and its coat resembled one of those rugs that later I saw brought from the Orient, with red and emerald scales on which were drawn, yellow as the plague, horrible and sturdy armatures of bone. Also yellow was the tail, which twisted from the rump to the head, ending in a final scroll of black and white tufts.

I was already quite awed by the lion (and more than once I had looked around as if I expected to see an animal of that description suddenly appear) when I decided to look at other pages and my eye fell, at the opening of the Gospel of Matthew, on the image of a man. I do not know why, but it frightened me more than the lion: the face was a man’s, but this man was sheathed in a kind of stiff chasuble that covered him to his feet, and this chasuble, or cuirass, was encrusted with red and yellow semiprecious stones. The head, which emerged enigmatically from a castle of rubies and topazes, seemed (how blasphemous terror made me!) that of the mysterious murderer whose impalpable trail we were following. And then I realized why I linked the animal and the armored man so closely with the labyrinth: both illustrations, like all in that book, emerged from a pattern of interlocking labyrinths, whose lines of onyx and emerald, threads of chrysoprase, ribbons of beryl seemed all to refer to the tangle of rooms and corridors where I was. My eye became lost, on the page, along gleaming paths, as my feet were becoming lost in the troublous succession of the rooms of the library, and seeing my own wandering depicted on those parchments filled me with uneasiness and convinced me that each of those books was telling, through mysterious cachinnations, my present story. “De to fabula narratur,” I said to myself, and I wondered if those pages did not already contain the story of future events in store for me.

I opened another book, and this seemed of the Hispanic school. The colors were violent, the reds suggested blood or fire. It was the book of Revelation of the apostle, and once again, as the night before, I happened upon the page of the mulier amicta sole. But it was not the same book; the illumination was different. Here the artist had dwelled at greater length on the woman’s form. I compared her face, her bosom, her curving thighs with the statue of the Virgin I had seen with Ubertino. The line was different, but this mulier also seemed very beautiful to me. I thought I should not dwell on these notions, and I turned several more pages. I found another woman, but this time it was the whore of Babylon. I was not so much struck by her form as by the thought that she, too, was a woman like the other, and yet this one was the vessel of every vice, whereas the other was the receptacle of every virtue. But the forms were womanly in both cases, and at a certain point I could no longer understand what distinguished them. Again I felt an inner agitation; the image of the Virgin in the church became superimposed on that of the beautiful Margaret. “I am damned!” I said to myself. Or, “I am mad.” And I decided I should leave the library.

Luckily I was near the staircase. I rushed down, at the risk of stumbling and extinguishing the lamp. I found myself again under the broad vaults of the scriptorium, but I did not linger even there, and hurled myself down the stairs leading to the refectory.

Here I paused, gasping. The light of the moon came through the windows, very radiant, and I hardly needed the lamp, which would have been indispensable for cells and for passages of the library. Nevertheless, I kept it burning, as if to seek comfort. But I was still breathless, and I decided I should drink some water to calm my tension. Since the kitchen was near, I crossed the refectory and slowly opened one of the doors that led into the second half of the ground floor of the Aedificium.

And at this point my terror, instead of lessening, increased. Because I immediately realized someone else was in the kitchen, near the bread oven — or at least I realized a light was shining in that corner. Filled with fear, I blew mine out. Frightened as I was, I instilled fright, and in fact the other person (or persons) immediately put out their light, too. But in vain, because the moonlight illuminated the kitchen sufficiently to cast before me one or more confused shadows on the floor.

Frozen, I did not dare draw back, or advance. I heard a stammering sound, and I thought I heard, softly, a woman’s voice. Then from the shapeless group that could be discerned vaguely near the oven, a dark, squat form broke away and fled toward the outside door, evidently left ajar, closing it after himself.

I remained, on the threshold between refectory and kitchen, and so did a vague something near the oven. A vague and — how to say it? — moaning something. From the shadows, in fact, came a groan, a kind of subdued weeping, rhythmic sobs of fear.

Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear, but it was not fear that impelled me toward the shadow. Rather, I would say, I was driven by an intoxication not unlike the one that had gripped me when I was having visions. In the kitchen there was something kin to the fumes that had overcome me in the library the night before. It was perhaps not the same substance, but on my overexcited senses it had the same effect. I sniffed a pungent smell of traganth, alum, and tartar, which cooks use to make wine aromatic. Or perhaps, as I learned later, in those days they were brewing beer (which in that northern part of the peninsula was held in some esteem), and it was prepared with the method of my country, with heather, swamp myrtle, and wild rosemary. All spices that intoxicate more than my nostrils, my mind.

And while my rational instinct was to cry out “Vade retro!” and get away from the moaning thing that was certainly a succubus summoned for me by the Evil One, something in my vis appetitiva urged me forward, as if I wanted to take part to some marvel.

And so I approached the shadow, until, in the moonlight that fell from the high windows, I realized that it was a woman, trembling, clutching to her breast one hand holding a package, and drawing back, weeping, toward the mouth of the oven.

May God, the Blessed Virgin, and all the saints of paradise assist me in telling what then happened. Modesty, the dignity of my position (as an aged monk by now, in this handsome monastery of Melk, a haven of peace and serene meditation), would counsel me to take the most devout precautions. I should simply say that something evil took place and that it would not be meet to tell what it was, and so I would upset neither my reader nor myself.

But I have determined to tell, of those remote events, the whole truth, and truth is indivisible, it shines with its own transparency and does not allow itself to be diminished by our interests or our shame. The problem is, rather, of telling what happened not as I see it now and remember it (even if I still remember everything with pitiless vividness, nor do I know whether my subsequent repentance has so fixed in my memory these situations and thoughts, or whether the inadequacy of that same repentance still torments me, resuscitating in my oppressed mind the smallest details of my shame), but as I saw it and felt it then. And I can do so with the fidelity of a chronicler, for if I close my eyes I can repeat not only everything I did but also what I thought in those moments, as if I were copying a parchment written at the time. I must therefore proceed in this way, Saint Michael Archangel protect me, because for the edification of future readers and the flaying of my guilt I want now to tell how a young man can succumb to the snares of the Devil, that they may be known and evident, so anyone encountering them in the future may defeat them.

So, it was a woman. Or, rather, a girl. Having had until then (and since then, God be thanked) little intimacy with creatures of that sex, I cannot say what her age may have been. I know she was young, almost adolescent, perhaps she had passed sixteen or eighteen springs, or perhaps twenty; and I was struck by the impression of human reality that emanated from that form. It was not a vision, and in any case it seemed to me valde bona. Perhaps because she was trembling like a little bird in winter, and was weeping, and was afraid of me.

Thinking that the duty of every good Christian is to succor his neighbor, I approached her with great gentleness and in good Latin told her she should not fear, because I was a friend, in any case not an enemy, certainly not the enemy she perhaps dreaded.

Because of the meekness of my gaze, I imagine, the creature grew calm and came to me. I sensed that she did not understand my Latin and instinctively I addressed her in my German vernacular, and this frightened her greatly, whether because of the harsh sounds, unfamiliar to the people of those parts, or because those sounds reminded her of some other experience with soldiers from my lands, I cannot say which. Then I smiled, considering that the language of gestures and of the face is more universal than that of words, and she was reassured. She smiled at me, too, and said a few words.

I knew her vernacular very slightly; it was different from the bit I had learned in Pisa, but I realized from her tone that she was saying sweet words to me, and she seemed to be saying something like “You are young, you are handsome…” It is rare for a novice who has spent his whole childhood in a monastery to hear declarations of his beauty; indeed, we are regularly admonished that physical beauty is fleeting and must be considered base. But the snares of the Enemy are infinite, and I confess that this reference to my comeliness, though mendacious, fell sweetly on my ears and filled me with an irrepressible emotion. Especially since the girl, in saying this, had extended her hand until the tips of her fingers grazed my cheek, then quite beardless. I felt a kind of delirium, but at that moment I was unable to sense any hint of sin in my heart. Such is the force of the Devil when he wants to try us and dispel from our spirit the signs of grace.

What did I feel? What did I see? I remember only that the emotions of the first moment were bereft of any expression, because my tongue and my mind had not been instructed in how to name sensations of that sort. Until I recalled other inner words, heard in another time and in other places, spoken certainly for other ends, but which seemed wondrously in keeping with my joy in that moment, as if they had been born consubstantially to express it. Words pressed into the caverns of my memory rose to the (dumb) surface of my lips, and I forgot that they had served in Scripture or in the pages of the saints to express quite different, more radiant realities. But was there truly a difference between the delights of which the saints had spoken and those that my agitated spirit was feeling at that moment? At that moment the watchful sense of difference was annihilated in me. And this, it seems to me, is precisely the sign of rapture in the abysses of identity.

Suddenly the girl appeared to me as the black but comely virgin of whom the Song of Songs speaks. She wore a threadbare little dress of rough cloth that opened in a fairly immodest fashion over her bosom, and around her neck was a necklace made of little colored stones, very commonplace, I believe. But her head rose proudly on a neck as white as an ivory tower, her eyes were clear as the pools of Heshbon, her nose was as the tower of Lebanon, her hair like purple. Yes, her tresses seemed to me like a flock of goats, her teeth like flocks of sheep coming up from their bath, all in pairs, so that none preceded its companion. And I could not help murmuring: “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair. Thy hair is as a flock of goats that lie along the side of Mount Gilead; thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate, thy neck is like the tower of David whereon there hang a thousand bucklers.” And I asked myself, frightened and rapt, who was she who rose before me like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun, terribilis ut castorum acies ordinata.

Then the creature came still closer to me, throwing into a corner the dark package she had till then held pressed to her bosom; and she raised her hand to stroke my face, and repeated the words I had already heard. And while I did not know whether to flee from her or move even closer, while my head was throbbing as if the trumpets of Joshua were about to bring down the walls of Jericho, as I yearned and at once feared to touch her, she smiled with great joy, emitted the stifled moan of a pleased she-goat, and undid the strings that closed her dress over her bosom, slipped the dress from her body like a tunic, and stood before me as Eve must have appeared to Adam in the garden of Eden. “Pulchra sunt ubera quae paululum supereminent et tument modice,” I murmured, repeating the words I had heard from Ubertino, because her breasts appeared to me like two fawns that are twins of a roe, feeding among the lilies, her navel was a goblet wherein no mingled wine is wanting, her belly a heap of wheat set about with lilies.

“O sidus clarum pellarum,” I cried to her, “o porta clausa, forts hortorum, cella custos unguentorum, cella pigmentaria!” Inadvertently I found myself against her body, feeling its warmth and the sharp perfume of unguents never known before. I remembered, “Sons, when mad love comes, man is powerless!” and I understood that, whether what I felt was a snare of the Enemy or a gift of heaven, I was now powerless against the impulse that moved me, and I cried, “Oh langueo,” and, “Causam languoris video nec caveo!,” also because a rosy perfume breathed from her lips and her feet were beautiful in sandals, and her legs were like columns and jewels were the joints of her thighs, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. O love, daughter of delights, a king is held captive in your tresses, I murmured to myself, and I was in her arms, and we fell together onto the bare floor of the kitchen, and, whether on my own initiative or through her wiles, I found myself free of my novice’s habit and we felt no shame at our bodies and cuncta erant bona.

And she kissed me with the kisses of her mouth, and her loves were more delicious than wine and her ointments had a goodly fragrance, and her neck was beautiful among pearls and her cheeks among earrings, behold thou art fair, my beloved, behold thou art fair; thine eyes are as doves (I said), and let me see thy face, let me hear thy voice, for thy voice is harmonious and thy face enchanting, thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck, thy lips drop as the honeycomb, honey and milk are under thy tongue, the smell of thy breath is of apples, thy two breasts are clusters of grapes, thy palate a heady wine that goes straight to my love and mows over my lips and teeth… A fountain sealed, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, myrrh and aloes, I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk. Who was she, who was she who rose like the dawn, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?

O Lord, when the soul is transported, the only virtue lies in loving what you see (is that not true?), the supreme happiness in having what you have; there blissful life is drunk at its source (has this not been said?), there you savor the true life that we will live after this mortal life among the angels for all eternity… This is what I was thinking and it seemed to me the prophecies were being fulfilled at last, as the girl lavished indescribable sweetness on me, and it was as if my whole body were an eye, before and behind, and I could suddenly see all surrounding things. And I understood that from it, from love, unity and tenderness are created together, as are good and kiss and fulfillment, as I had already heard, believing I was being told about something else. And only for an instant, as my joy was about to reach its zenith, did I remember that perhaps I was experiencing, and at night, the possession of the noontime Devil, who was condemned finally to reveal himself in his true, diabolical nature to the soul that in ecstasy asks “Who are you?,” who knows how to grip the soul and delude the body. But I was immediately convinced that my scruples were indeed devilish, for nothing could be more right and good and holy than what I was experiencing, the sweetness of which grew with every moment. As a little drop of water added to a quantity of wine is completely dispersed and takes on the color and taste of wine, as red-hot iron becomes like molten fire losing its original form, as air when it is inundated with the sun’s light is transformed into total splendor and clarity so that it no longer seems illuminated but, rather, seems to be light itself, so I felt myself die of tender liquefaction, and I had only the strength left to murmur the words of the psalm: “Behold my bosom is like new wine, sealed, which bursts new vessels,” and suddenly I saw a brilliant light and in it a saffron-colored form which flamed up in a sweet and shining fire, and that splendid light spread through all the shining fire, and this shining fire through that golden form and that brilliant light and that shining fire through the whole form.

As, half fainting, I fell on the body to which I had joined myself, I understood in a last vital spurt that flame consists of a splendid clarity, an unusual vigor, and an igneous ardor, but it possesses the splendid clarity so that it may illuminate and the igneous ardor that it may burn. Then I understood the abyss, and the deeper abysses that it conjured up.

Now that, with a hand that trembles (either in horror at the sin I am recounting or in guilty nostalgia of the event I recall), I write these lines, I realize that to describe my wicked ecstasy of that instant I have used the same words that I used, not many pages before, to describe the fire that burned the martyred body of the Fraticello Michael. Nor is it an accident that my hand, passive agent of the soul, has penned the same expression for two experiences so disparate, because probably I experienced them in the same way both at the time, when I lived through them, and now, as I have tried to bring them back to life on this parchment.

There is a mysterious wisdom by which phenomena among themselves disparate can be called by analogous names, just as divine things can be designated by terrestrial terms, and through equivocal symbols God can be called lion or leopard; and death can be called sword; joy, flame; flame, death; death, abyss; abyss, perdition; perdition, raving; and raving, passion.

Why did 1, as a youth, depict the ecstasy of death that had impressed me in the martyr Michael in the words the saint had used for the ecstasy of (divine) life, and yet I could not refrain from depicting in the same words the ecstasy (culpable and fleeting) of earthly pleasure, which immediately afterward had spontaneously appeared to me as a sensation of death and annihilation? I shall try now to reflect both on the way I felt, a few months apart, two experiences at once uplifting and painful, and on the way in which that night in the abbey I consciously remembered the one and felt with my senses the other, a few hours apart, and, further, on the way I have relived them now, penning these lines, and on how in all three instances I recited them to myself with the words of the different experience of that sainted soul annihilated in the divine vision. Have I perhaps blasphemed (then? now?)? What was similar in Michael’s desire for death, in the transport I felt at the sight of the flame consuming him, in the desire for carnal union I felt with the girl, in the mystic shame with which I translated it allegorically, and in the desire for joyous annihilation that moved the saint to die in his own love in order to live longer and eternally? Is it possible that things so equivocal can be said in such a univocal way? And this, it seems, is the teaching left us by Saint Thomas, the greatest of all doctors: the more openly it remains a figure of speech, the more it is a dissimilar similitude and not literal, the more a metaphor reveals its truth. But if love of the flame and of the abyss are the metaphor for the love of God, can they be the metaphor for love of death and love of sin? Yes, as the lion and the serpent stand both for Christ and the Devil. The fact is that correct interpretation can be established only on the authority of the fathers, and in the case that torments me, I have no auctoritas to which my obedient mind can refer, and I burn in doubt (and again the image of fire appears to define the void of the truth and the fullness of the error that annihilate me!). What is happening, O Lord, in my spirit, now that I allow myself to be gripped by the vortex of memories and I conflagrate different times at once, as if I were to manipulate the order of the stars and the sequence of their celestial movements? Certainly I am overstepping the boundaries of my sinful and sick intelligence. Now, let us return to the task I had humbly set myself. I was telling about that day and the total bewilderment of the senses into which I sank. There, I have told what I remembered on that occasion, and let my feeble pen, faithful and truthful chronicler, stop there.

I lay, how long I do not know, the girl at my side. With a light motion her hand continued to touch my body, now damp with sweat. I felt an inner exultation, which was not peace, but like the last subdued flicker of a fire taking time to die beneath the embers, when the flame is already dead. I would not hesitate to call blessed a man to whom it was granted to experience something similar in this life (I murmured as if in my sleep), even rarely (and, in fact, I experienced it only that time), and very rapidly, for the space of a single moment. As if one no longer existed, not feeling one’s identity at all, or feeling lowered, almost annihilated: if some mortal (I said to myself) could for a single moment and most rapidly enjoy what I have enjoyed, he would immediately look with a baleful eye at this perverse world, would be upset by the bane of daily life, would feel the weight of the body of death… Was this not what I had been taught? That invitation of my whole spirit to lose all memory in bliss was surely (now I understood it) the radiance of the eternal sun; and the joy that it produces opens, extends, enlarges man, and the gaping chasm man bears within himself is no longer sealed so easily, for it is the wound cut by the blow of love’s sword, nor is there anything else here below more sweet and terrible. But such is the right of the sun: it riddles the wounded man with its rays and all the wounds widen, the man uncloses and extends, his very veins are laid open, his strength is now incapable of obeying the orders it receives and is moved solely by desire, the spirit burns, sunk into the abyss of what it is now touching, seeing its own desire and its own truth outstripped by the reality it has lived and is living. And one witnesses, dumbfounded, one’s own raving.

And in the grip of these sensations of ineffable inner joy, I dozed off.

I reopened my eyes some time later, and the moonlight, perhaps because of a cloud, had grown much fainter. I stretched out my hand at my side and no longer felt the girl’s body. I turned my head; she was gone.

The absence of the object that had unleashed my desire and slaked my thirst made me realize suddenly both the vanity of that desire and the perversity of that thirst. Omne animal triste post coitum. I became aware that I had sinned. Now, after years and years, while I still bitterly bemoan my error, I cannot forget how that evening I had felt great pleasure, and I would be doing a wrong to the Almighty, who created all things in goodness and beauty, if I did not admit that also between those two sinners something happened that in itself, naturaliter, was good and beautiful. But perhaps it is my present old age, which makes me feel, culpably, how beautiful and good all my youth was just when I should turn my thoughts to death, which is approaching. Then, a young man, I did not think of death, but, hotly and sincerely, I wept for my sin.

I stood up, trembling, also because I had lain a long time on the cold stones of the kitchen and my body was numb. I dressed, almost feverish. I glimpsed then in a corner the package that the girl had abandoned in her flight. I bent to examine the object: it was a kind of bundle, a rolled-up cloth that seemed to come from the kitchen. I unwrapped it, and at first I did not understand what was inside, both because of the scant light and because of the shapeless shape of the contents. Then I understood. Among clots of blood and scraps of flabbier and whitish meat, before my eyes, dead but still throbbing with the gelatinous life of dead viscera, lined by livid nerves: a heart, of great size.

A dark veil descended over my eyes, an acid saliva rose in my mouth, I let out a cry and fell as a dead body falls.

NIGHT

I came around to find someone bathing my face. There, holding a lamp, was Brother William, who had put something under my head.

“What’s happened, Adso?” he asked me. “Have you been roaming about at night stealing offal from the kitchen?”

In short, William had awakened, sought me for I forget what reason, and, not finding me, suspected me of going to perform some bit of bravado in the library. Approaching the Aedificium on the kitchen side, he saw a shadow slip from the door toward the vegetable garden (it was the girl, leaving, perhaps because she had heard someone approaching). He tried to figure out who it was and follow her, but she (or, rather, the shadow, as she was for him) went toward the outside wall of the compound and disappeared. Then William — after an exploration of the environs — entered the kitchen and found me lying in a faint.

When, still terrified, I mentioned to him the package with the heart, blurting out something about another crime, he started laughing: “Adso, what man could have such a big heart? It’s the heart of a cow, or an ox; they slaughtered an animal today, in fact. But tell me, how did it come into your hands?”

At that point, overwhelmed with remorse, and still stunned by my great fear, I burst into a flood of tears and asked him to administer to me the sacrament of confession. Which he did, and I told him all, concealing nothing.

Brother William heard me out earnestly, but with a hint of indulgence. When I had finished his face turned grave and he said: “Adso, you have sinned, that is certain, against the commandment that bids you not to fornicate, and also against your duties as a novice. In your defense there is the fact that you found yourself in one of those situations in which even a father in the desert would have damned himself. And of woman as source of temptation the Scriptures have already said enough. Ecclesiastes says of woman that her conversation is like burning fire, and the Proverbs say that she takes possession of man’s precious soul and the strongest men are ruined by her. And Ecclesiastes further says: ‘And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands.’ And others have said she is the vessel of the Devil. Having affirmed this, dear Adso, I cannot convince myself that God chose to introduce such a foul being into creation without also endowing it with some virtues. And I cannot help reflecting that He granted her many privileges and motives of prestige, three of them very great indeed. In fact, He created man in this base world, and from mud; woman He created later, in paradise and of noble human matter. And he did not mold her from Adam’s feet or his viscera, but from the rib. In the second place, the Lord, who is all-powerful, could have become incarnate as a man directly in some miraculous way, but he chose instead to dwell in the womb of a woman, a sign that it was not so foul after all. And when he appeared after the Resurrection, he appeared to a woman. And finally, in the celestial glory no man shall be king of that realm, but the queen will be a woman who has never sinned. If, then, the Lord showed such favor to Eve herself and to her daughters, is it so abnormal that we also should feel drawn by the graces and the nobility of that sex? What I mean to say to you, Adso, is that you must not do it again, of course, but it is not so monstrous that you were tempted to do it. And as far as that goes, for a monk to have, at least once in his life, experience of carnal passion, so that he can one day be indulgent and understanding with the sinners he will counsel and console … well, dear Adso, it is not a thing to be wished before it happens, but it is not something to vituperate too much once it has happened. So go with God and let us speak of it no more. Indeed, rather than reflect and dwell too much on something best forgotten, if possible” — and it seemed to me at this point that his voice faded as if at some private emotion — “let us ask ourselves the meaning of what happened this night. Who was this girl and whom was she meeting?”

“This I don’t know, and I didn’t see the man who was with her,” I said.

“Very well, but we can deduce who it was from many and certain clues. First of all, the man was old and ugly, one with whom a girl does not go willingly, especially if she is beautiful, as you say, though it seems to me, my dear wolf cub, that you were prepared to find any food delicious.”

“Why old and ugly?”

“Because the girl didn’t go with him for love, but for a pack of scraps. Certainly she is a girl from the village who, perhaps not for the first time, grants her favors to some lustful monk out of hunger, and receives as recompense something for her and her family to eat.”

“A harlot!” I said, horrified.

“A poor peasant girl, Adso. Probably with smaller brothers to feed. Who, if she were able, would give herself for love and not for lucre. As she did last night. In fact, you tell me she found you young and handsome, and gave you gratis and out of love what to others she would have given for an ox heart and some bits of lung. And she felt so virtuous for the free gift she made of herself, and so uplifted, that she ran off without taking anything in exchange. This is why I think the other one, to whom she compared you, was neither young nor handsome.”

I confess that, profound as my repentance was, that explanation filled me with a sweet pride; but I kept silent and allowed my master to continue.

“This ugly old man must have the opportunity to go down to the village and deal with the peasants, for some purpose connected with his position. He must know how to get people into the abbey and out of it, and know there would be that offal in the kitchen (perhaps tomorrow it would be said that the door had been left open and a dog had come in and eaten the scraps). And, finally, he must have had a certain sense of economy, and a certain interest in seeing that the kitchen was not deprived of more precious victuals: otherwise he would have given her a steak or some choice cut. And so you see that the picture of our stranger is drawn very clearly and that all these properties, or accidents, are suited to a substance that I would have no fear in defining as our cellarer, Remigio of Varagine. Or, if I am mistaken, our mysterious Salvatore — who, for that matter, since he comes from these parts, can speak easily with the local people and would know how to persuade a girl to do what he would have made her do, if you had not arrived.”

“That is certainly all correct,” I said, convinced, “but what is the good of knowing it now?”

“None. Or much,” William said. “The story may or may not have a connection with the crimes that concern us. On the other hand, if the cellarer was a Dolcinian, that would explain this, and vice versa. And we now know, finally, that this abbey is a place of many, bizarre events at night. And who can say that our cellarer, and Salvatore, who move through it in darkness with such ease, do not know, in any event, more things than what they tell?”

“But will they tell them to us?”

“No, not if we behave in a compassionate manner, ignoring their sins. But if we were really to know something, we would possess a way of persuading them to speak. In other words, if there is need, the cellarer and Salvatore are ours, and may God forgive us this deception, since He forgives so many other things,” he said, looking at me slyly; I did not have the heart to make any comment on the licitness of these notions of his.

“And now we should go to bed, because in an hour it is matins. But I see you are still agitated, my poor Adso, still fearful because of your sin… There is nothing like a good spell in church to calm the spirit. I have absolved you, but one never knows. Go and ask the Lord’s confirmation.” And he gave me a rather brisk slap on the head, perhaps as a show of paternal and virile affection, perhaps as an indulgent penance. Or perhaps (as I culpably thought at that moment) in a sort of good-natured envy, since he was a man who so thirsted for new and vital experiences.

We headed for the church, taking our usual path, which I followed in haste, closing my eyes, because all those bones reminded me too obviously, that night, of how I was dust and how foolish had been the pride of my flesh.

When we reached the nave we saw a shadowy figure before the main altar. I thought it was again Ubertino, but it was Alinardo, who did not recognize us at first. He said he was unable to sleep and had decided to spend the night praying for that young monk who had disappeared (he could not even remember the name): He prayed for his soul, if he were dead, and for his body, if he were lying ill and alone somewhere.

“Too many dead,” he said, “too many dead … But it was written in the book of the apostle. With the first trumpet came the hail, with the second a third part of the sea became blood; and you found one body in the hail, the other in blood… The third trumpet warns that a burning star will fall in the third part of rivers and fountains of waters. So I tell you, our third brother, has disappeared. And fear for the fourth, because the third part of the sun will be smitten, and of the moon and the stars, so there will be almost complete darkness …”

As we came out of the transept, William asked himself whether there were not some element of truth in the old man’s words.

“But,” I pointed out to him, “this would mean assuming that a single diabolical mind, using the Apocalypse as guide, had arranged the three disappearances, also assuming that Berengar is dead. But, on the contrary, we know Adelmo died of his own volition…”

“True,” William said, “but the same diabolical or sick mind could have been inspired by Adelmo’s death to arrange the other two in a symbolic way. And if this were so, Berengar should be found in a river or a fountain. And there are no rivers or fountains in the abbey, at least not such as someone could drown or be drowned in…”

“There are only the baths,” I observed, almost by chance.

“Adso!” William said. “You know, that could be an idea? The balneary!”

“But they must have looked there…”

“I saw the servants this morning when they were making the search; they opened the door of the balneary and took a glance inside, without investigating. They did not expect to find something carefully hidden: they were looking for a corpse lying somewhere theatrically, like Venantius’s body in the jar… Let’s go and have a look. It is still dark anyway, and our lamp seems to go on burning merrily.”

So we did, and without difficulty we opened the door of the balneary, next to the infirmary.

Separated one from the other by thick curtains were some tubs, I don’t recall how many. The monks used them for their ablutions, on the days the Rule established, and Severinus used them for therapeutic reasons, because nothing can restore body and mind better than a bath. A fireplace in one corner allowed the water to be heated easily. We found it dirty with fresh ashes, and before it a great cauldron lay, overturned. The water could be drawn from a font in another corner.

We looked in the first tubs, which were empty. Only the last, concealed by a drawn curtain, was full, and next to it lay a garment, in a heap. At first sight, in the beam of our lamp, the surface of the liquid seemed smooth; but as the light struck it we glimpsed on the bottom, lifeless, a naked human body. We pulled it out slowly: Berengar. And this one, William said, truly had the face of a drowned man. The features were swollen. The body, white and flabby, without hair, seemed a woman’s except for the obscene spectacle of the flaccid pudenda. I blushed, then shuddered. I made the sign of the cross as William blessed the corpse.