“They wouldn’t agree to anything like that,” Rainald grumbled.
“Yes, they would.” Frederick’s face brightened. “I tell you they will agree. Only, first, they have to make that declaration, and then I’ll give them independence. Otherwise everyone will think that they did it to repay a gift from me.”
“If you ask me, even if you do turn the process around, if someone wants to say it was prearranged, they’ll say so anyway,” Baudolino remarked skeptically. “But I’d like to see anyone stand up and say the doctors of Bologna aren’t worth a dried fig, when even the emperor has gone humbly to ask their opinion. At that point, what they have said is Gospel.”
And so it happened, that same year, at Roncaglia, where for the second time a great diet was held. For Baudolino it was above all a great spectacle. As Rahewin explained to him—so he wouldn’t believe that everything he saw was simply a big circus with banners flapping on all sides, standards, colored tents, merchants, and mountebanks—Frederick, along one side of
the Po, had a typical Roman camp reconstructed, to remind everyone that his dignity derived from Rome.
In the center of the camp stood the imperial tent, like a temple, and it was encircled by the tents of feudal lords, vassals, and vavasours. On Frederick’s side were the archbishop of Cologne, the bishop of Bamberg, Daniel of Prague, Conrad of Augusta, and many others.
On the other side of the river, the cardinal legate of the Apostolic See, the patriarch of Aquileia, the archbishop of Milan, the bishops of Turin, Alba, Ivrea, Asti, Novara, Vercelli, Terdona, Pavia, Como, Lodi, Cremona, Piacenza, Reggio, Modena, Bologna, and others, more than can be remembered. Seated in this majestic and truly universal assembly, Frederick opened the discussion.
In brief (Baudolino said, so as not to bore Niketas with the masterpieces of imperial, judicial, and ecclesiastical oratory), four doctors of Bologna, the most famous, pupils of the great Irnerius, were invited by the emperor to express an unchallengeable doctrinal opinion on his powers. And three of them, Bulgarus, Jacopus, and Hugo of Porta Ravegnana, expressed themselves as Frederick wished: namely, that the right of the emperor was based on Roman law. Only a certain Martinus was of a different opinion. “And Frederick had then to gouge out his eyes,” Niketas commented.
“Oh, not at all, Master Niketas,” Baudolino replied, “You Romei gouge out the eyes of this man or that and you have no idea where the law stands any more, forgetting your great Justinian. Immediately afterwards, Frederick promulgated the Constitutio Habita, with which the autonomy of the Bologna studium was recognized, and if the studium was autonomous, then Martinus could say what he wanted and not even the emperor could touch a hair of his head.
For if he had, then the doctors were no longer autonomous, and if they weren’t autonomous then their opinion was worthless, and Frederick risked passing for a usurper.”
All right, Niketas thought, then Master Baudolino wants to suggest to me that he was the founder of the empire, and that if he simply uttered an ordinary sentence, such was his power that it became truth. Let’s hear the rest.
Meanwhile the Genoese had come in bearing a basket of fruit, because it was midday, and Niketas had to have refreshment.
They said the sack was continuing, and it was best to remain in the house. Baudolino resumed his story.
Frederick had decided that, if a boy still almost beardless produced such acute ideas, who could say what would happen if the boy were actually sent to study in Paris? He embraced Baudolino affectionately, urging him to become truly learned, since he himself, with his duties of government and his military operations, had never had time to cultivate his mind properly.
The empress had taken her leave of him with a kiss on the forehead (we can only imagine Baudolino’s ecstasy), saying to him (that prodigious woman, though she was a great lady and a queen, knew how to read and write): “Write to me, tell me about yourself, about what happens to you. Life at court is monotonous. Your letters will be a comfort to me.”
“I will write, I swear,” Baudolino said, with an ardor that should have aroused the suspicions of those present. None of them became suspicious (who notices the excitement of a boy about to go to Paris?), except perhaps Beatrice. In fact, she looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time, and her very white face was covered with an immediate flush.
But Baudolino, with a bow that obliged him to look at the ground, had already left the hall.
- Baudolino goes to Paris
Baudolino arrived in Paris a bit late: in those schools, students entered before they were fourteen, and he was two years older. But he had already learned so many things from Otto that he allowed himself to miss some of the lessons in order, as will be seen, to do other things.
He had set off with a companion, the son of a knight from Cologne, who preferred to devote himself to the liberal arts rather than to the army, not without causing his father some pain, but supported by his mother, who vaunted his precocious poetic gifts, whence Baudolino, if he had ever known the youth’s name, soon forgot it. He called him the Poet, and so did all the others who met him later.
Baudolino soon discovered that the Poet had never written a poem, but had only declared his wish to write some. Since he constantly recited the poems of others, in the end even his father became convinced that his son should follow the Muses and allowed him to leave, putting in his pocket barely enough to keep him alive, in the completely mistaken notion that the small amount necessary to live in Cologne would be more than enough for life in Paris.
Immediately upon his arrival, Baudolino, who could hardly wait to obey the empress, wrote her some letters. In the beginning he believed he would allay his ardor by fulfilling that request, but he realized how painful it was to write without being able to tell her what he truly felt, inditing letters perfect and seemly, in which he described Paris, a city rich in beautiful churches, where one breathed fine air, the sky was vast and serene, except when it rained, but never more than once or twice a day, and for someone who came from virtually eternal fog, it was a place of eternal spring.
There was a winding river with two islands in the middle, and the water was very good to drink, and just beyond the walls balmy spaces stretched away, such as the meadow next to the abbey of Saint Germain, where they spentbeautiful afternoons playing ball.
He told her of his troubles in the early days, when he had to find a room, to share with his companion, without letting the landlords cheat him. At a dear price they had found a fairly spacious room, with a table, two benches, shelves for books and a trunk…. There was a high bed with an ostrich-feather comforter, and a low bed on wheels with a goose-down cover, which in the daytime was concealed beneath the bigger one.
The letter did not say that, after a brief hesitation over the assignment of the beds, it was decided that every evening the two roommates would play chess for the more comfortable bed, because at court chess was considered an unseemly game.
Another letter told how they awoke early because lessons began at seven and lasted until late afternoon. They fortified themselves with a good ration of bread and a bowl of wine, before going to listen to their masters/teachers in a kind of stable, where, seated on the sparse straw on the ground, they were colder than they would have been outside.
Beatrice was moved and urged him not to be frugal with the wine, otherwise a youth feels listless the whole day, and to hire a servant, not only to carry the books, which are very heavy and to carry them oneself is unworthy of a person of rank, but also to buy the wood and light the fire in the room betimes, so that it would be good and warm in the evening. And for all these expenses she sent forty solidi of Susa, enough to buy an ox.
The servant had not been hired and the wood had not been bought, because at night the two featherbeds were fine; the sum had been spent more wisely, inasmuch as the evenings were passed in taverns, which were splendidly heated and permitted some refreshment after a day of study, and some pinching of bottoms of the serving wenches. And further, in those places of merry repose, like the Ecu d’Argent, the Croix de Fer, Les Trois Chandeliers, between one mug and the next, they restored their vigor with pork or chicken pies, a pair of pigeons or a roast goose or, if they were poorer, with tripe or mutton.
Baudolino helped the Poet, who was penniless, to live not by tripe alone. But the Poet was a costly friend, because the amount of wine he drank made that Susa ox grow thinner before their very eyes.
Omitting these details, Baudolino went on to write of his masters and the fine things he was learning. Beatrice was very sensitive to these revelations, which whetted her own appetite for knowledge, and
