In Paris you will study rhetoric and you will read the poets; rhetoric is the art of saying well that which may or may not be true, and it is the duty of poets to invent beautiful falsehoods. It would also be well for you to study a bit of theology, but without trying to become a theologian, because there must be no joking with the things of Almighty God. Study enough so that you will afterwards cut a fine figure at court, where you will surely become a ministerial, which is the highest rank the son of peasants can aspire to; you will be like a knight, the peer of many nobles, and you will be able to serve faithfully your adoptive father. Do all this in memory of me, and Jesus forgive me if, without meaning to, I have used his words.”
Then he emitted a rattle, and lay immobile. Baudolino was about to close Otto’s eyes, believing he had heaved his last sigh, but suddenly the older man reopened his mouth and whispered, exploiting his final breath: “Baudolino, remember the kingdom of the Presbyter Johannes. Only in seeking it can the oriflammes of Christianity go beyond Byzantium and Jerusalem. I have heard you invent many stories that the emperor has believed. So then, if you have no other news of that realm, invent some. Mind you, I am not asking you to bear witness to what you believe false, which would be a sin, but to testify falsely to what you believe true—which is a virtuous act because it compensates for the lack of proof of something that certainly exists or happened.
I beseech you: there is surely a Johannes, beyond the lands of the Persians and the Armenians, beyond Baktu, Ecbatana, Persepolis, Susa, and Arbela, descendant of the Magi….
PressFrederick to the East, because from there comes the light that will illuminate him as the greatest of all kings…. Take the emperor out of that mire that stretches between Milan and Rome…. He could remain trapped in it until his death. Keep clear of a kingdom even where a pope rules. He will always be only half an emperor. Remember, Baudolino … Presbyter
Johannes … the way to the East…”
“But why are you saying this to me, master, and not to Rahewin?” “Because Rahewin has no imagination, he can recount only what he has seen, and at times not even that, because he doesn’t understand what he has seen. But you can imagine what you haven’t seen. Oh, why has it become so dark?”
Baudolino, who was a liar, told him not to worry, because night was falling. Just as noon was striking, Otto exhaled a hiss from his now hoarse throat, and his eyes remained open and fixed, as if he were looking at his Prester John enthroned. Baudolino closed his teacher’s eyes, and shed honest tears.
Saddened by Otto’s death, Baudolino went back to Frederick for a few months. At first he consoled himself with the thought that, seeing the emperor again, he would also see the empress. He saw her, and was saddened still more. We must not forget that Baudolino was approaching his sixteenth year and if, before, his falling in love might have seemed a boyish perturbation, of which he himself understood very little, now it was becoming conscious desire and complete torment.
Rather than remain at court and languish he always followed Frederick into the field, and he had witnessed things he was far from liking.
The Milanese destroyed Lodi for the second time, or, rather, first they sacked it, taking away livestock, forage, and goods from every household; then they drove all the citizens outside the walls, telling them that if they didn’t clear out to Hell and gone, every last one of them would taste the sword: women, old people, and children, including babes still in the cradle. The citizens of Lodi abandoned in the city only their dogs, and went off into the countryside, on foot, under the rain, even the nobles, who had been deprived of their horses, and the women with infants at their breast, and at times they fell by the wayside, or rolled brutally into the ditches. They took refuge between the Adda and the Serio; there they managed to find only some hovels where they slept, piled one upon another.
This in no way placated the Milanese, who came back to Lodi, imprisoning the very few who had refused to leave. They cut down all the vines and the trees and then set fire to the houses, destroying also most of the dogs.
These are not things that an emperor can tolerate, hence Frederick once again went down into Italy, with a great army made up of men from Burgundy, Lorraine, Bohemia, Hungary, Swabia, France, and any other imaginable place. First of all, he founded a new Lodi at Montegezzone, then he encamped before Milan, enthusiastically supported by the people of Pavia and Cremona, Pisa, Lucca, Florence and Siena, Vicenza, Treviso, Padua, Ferrara, Ravenna, Modena, and more, all allied with the empire to humiliate Milan.
And Milan was truly humiliated. By the end of the summer the city had capitulated and, in an effort to save it, the Milanese subjected themselves to a ritual that humiliated Baudolino himself, though he had no feelings for Milan. The defeated passed in a sad procession, all barefoot and in sackcloth, including the bishop, with the men-at-arms wearing their swords hung around their neck. Frederick, at this point his magnanimity returning, gave the humiliated the kiss of peace.
“Was it worth it,” Baudolino asked himself, “to act so overbearing with Lodi, and then have to humble themselves like this? Is it worth living in these lands where everyone seems to have made a vow of suicide, and one side helps the other kill themselves? I want to leave.” In reality, he also wanted to get away from Beatrice, because finally he had read somewhere
that distance can cure the love illness (and he had not yet read other books where, on the contrary, it is said that distance is precisely that which fans the flames of passion). So he went to Frederick to remind him of Otto’s advice and to have himself sent to Paris.
He found the emperor sad and wrathful, pacing back and forth in his chamber, while in one corner Rainald of Dassel was waiting for him to calm down. At a certain point Frederick stood still, looked into Baudolino’s eyes, and said: “You are my witness, boy, that I am bending every effort to bring all the cities of Italy under a single law, but, every time, I have to start over again from the beginning. Is my law perhaps wrong? Who can tell me my law is right?”
And, as if instinctively, Baudolino said: “Sire, if you start thinking that way, you’ll never reach an end, whereas, on the contrary, the emperor exists for this very reason: he isn’t emperor because he has the right ideas, but his ideas are right because they come to him, and that’s that.”
Frederick looked at him, then said to Rainald: “This boy expresses things better than the whole pack of you! If these words were simply turned into good Latin, they would seem wondrous!”
“Quod principi plaquit legis habet vigorem: that which pleases the prince has the strength of law,” Rainald of Dassel said. “Yes, it sounds very wise, and definitive. But it would have to be written in the Gospel, otherwise how could all be persuaded to accept this beautiful idea?”
“We clearly saw what happened in Rome,” Frederick said. “If I have myself anointed by the pope, I admit ipso facto that his power is superior to mine; if I grab the pope by the throat and fling him into the Tiber, I become a scourge of God worse even than poor Attila…. Where the devil can I find someone who will define my rights without claiming to be above me? Such
a person doesn’t exist in the world.”
“Perhaps a power such as that doesn’t exist,” Baudolino then said to him, “but the knowledge exists.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Bishop Otto told me what a studium is, he said that these communities of masters and students operate independently: the students come from all over the world and it doesn’t matter who their sovereign is, and they pay their teachers, who are therefore dependent entirely on their pupils.
This is how things work with the masters of law in Bologna, and this is how it is also in Paris, where in earlier times the masters taught in the cathedral schools and hence were dependent on the bishop, until one fine day they went off to teach on the Mountain of Saint Geneviève, and they attempt to discover the truth without listening either to the bishop or to the king.”
“If I were their king I’d show them a thing or two. But even if this were the case?”
“It would be the case if you made a law by which you acknowledge that the masters of Bologna are truly independent of every other power, whether yours or the pope’s or any other sovereign’s, and they are in the service only of the Law. Once they are invested with this dignity, unique in the world, they will affirm that—in accord with true reason, natural enlightenment, and tradition—the only law is the Roman and the only person representing it is the holy Roman emperor—and that naturally, as Master Rainald has said so well— quod principi plaquit legis habet vigorem.”
“And why would they say that?”
“Because, in exchange, you give them the right to say it,
