“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 in 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.”
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 officii 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 Lodève, 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
