A few steps away from the building, I saw Bernard Gui taking his leave of another person, whom I did not immediately recognize. Then, as he passed me, I realized it was Malachi. He looked around like a man not wishing to be seen while committing some crime.
He did not recognize me and went off. Impelled by curiosity, I followed Bernard and saw that he was glancing through some papers, which perhaps Malachi had delivered to him. At the door of the chapter house, with a gesture, he summoned the captain of the archers, standing nearby, and murmured a few words to him. Then he went in. I followed him still.
It was the first time I had set foot in that place. On the outside it was of modest dimensions and sober design; I realized that it had recently been rebuilt over the remains of a primitive abbatial church, perhaps partly destroyed by fire.
Entering from the outside, you passed beneath a portal in the new fashion, with a pointed arch and no decorations, surmounted by a rose window. But inside you found yourself in a vestibule, built on the traces of an old narthex. Facing you was another doorway, its arch in the old style, and with a half-moon tympanum wondrously carved. It must have been the doorway of the now vanished church.
The sculptures were equally beautiful but not so disturbing as those of the newer church. Here again, the tympanum was dominated by an enthroned Christ; but at his sides, in various poses and with various objects in their hands, were the twelve apostles, who had received from him the mission to go forth and preach among all peoples. Over Christ’s head, in an arc divided into twelve panels, and under Christ’s feet, in an unbroken procession of figures, the peoples of the world were portrayed, destined to receive the Word. From their dress I could recognize the Hebrews, the Cappadocians, the Arabs, the Indians, the Phrygians, the Byzantines, the Armenians, the Scythians, the Romans.
But, along with them, in thirty round frames that made an arc above the arc of twelve panels, were the inhabitants of the unknown worlds, of whom only the Physiologus and the vague reports of travelers speak slightly. Many of them were unfamiliar to me, others I identified.
For example, brutes with six fingers on each hand; fauns born from the worms that develop between the bark and the pulp of trees; sirens with scaly tails who seduce seamen; Ethiops, their bodies all black, defending themselves against the fire of the sun by digging underground caverns; ass-centaurs, men to the navel and asses below; Cyclopes, each with a single eye the size of a shield; Scylla, with a girl’s head and bosom, a she-wolf’s belly, and a dolphin’s tail; the hairy men of India, who live in swamps and on the river Epigmarides; the cynocephali, who cannot say a word without barking; sciopods, who run swiftly on their single leg and when they want to take shelter from the sun stretch out and hold up their great foot like an umbrella; astomats from Greece, who have no mouth but breathe through their nostrils and live only on air; bearded women of Armenia; Pygmies; blemmyae, born headless, with mouths in their bellies and eyes on their shoulders; the monster women of the Red Sea, twelve feet tall, with hair to the ankles, a cow’s tail at the base of the spine, and camel’s hoofs; and those whose soles are reversed, so that, following them by their footprints, one arrives always at the place whence they came and never where they are going; and men with three heads, others with eyes that gleam like lamps, and monsters of the island of Circe, human bodies with heads of the most diverse animals . . .
These and other wonders were carved on that doorway. But none of them caused uneasiness because they did not signify the evils of this earth or the torments of hell but, rather, bore witness that the Word had reached all the known world and was extending to the unknown; thus the doorway was a joyous promise of splendid oecumen.
A good augury, I said to myself, for the meeting to take place beyond this threshold, where men who have become one another’s enemy through conflicting interpretations of the Gospel will perhaps succeed today in settling their disputes. And I reproached myself, that I was a weak sinner to bewail my personal problems when such important events for the history of Christianity were about to take place. I measured the smallness of my sufferings against the great promise of peace confirmed in the stone of the tympanum. I asked God’s forgiveness for my frailty, and I crossed the threshold with new serenity.
The moment I entered I saw the members of both legations, complete, facing one another on a series of benches arranged in a hemicycle, the two sides separated by a table where the abbot and Cardinal Bertrand were sitting.
William, whom I followed in order to take notes, placed me among the Minorites, where Michael sat with his followers and other Franciscans of the court of Avignon, for the meeting was not meant to seem a duel between Italians and French, but a debate between supporters of the Franciscan Rule and their critics, all united by sound, Catholic loyalty to the papal court.
With Michael of Cesena were Brother Arnold of Aquitaine, Brother Hugh of Newcastle, and Brother William Alnwick, who had taken part in the Perugia chapter, and also the Bishop of Kaffa and Berengar Talloni, Bonagratia of Bergamo, and other Minorites from the Avignon court. On the opposite side sat Lawrence Decoin, bachelor of Avignon, the Bishop of Padua, and Jean d’Anneaux, doctor of theology in Paris.
Next to Bernard Gui, silent and pensive, there was the Dominican Jean de Baune, in Italy called Giovanni Dalbena. Years before, William told me, he had been inquisitor at Narbonne, where he had tried many Beghards; but when he found heresy in a proposition concerning the poverty of Christ, Berengar Talloni, reader in the convent of that city, rose against him and appealed to the Pope. At that time John was still uncertain about this question, so he summoned both men to his court, where they argued without arriving at any conclusion. Thus a short time later the Franciscans took their stand, which I have described, at the Perugia chapter. Finally, there were still others on the side of the Avignonese, including the Bishop of Alborea.
The session was opened by Abo, who deemed it opportune to sum up recent events. He recalled how in the year of our Lord 1322 the general chapter of the Friars Minor, gathered at Perugia under the leadership of Michael of Cesena, had established with mature and diligent deliberation that, to set an example of the perfect life, Christ and, following his teaching, the apostles had never owned anything in common, whether as property or feud, and this truth was a matter of Catholic faith and doctrine. The Council of Vienne in 1312 had also subscribed to this truth, and Pope John himself, in 1317, in the constitution regarding the condition of the Friars Minor which begins “Quorundam exigit,” had referred to the deliberations of that council as devoutly composed, lucid, sound, and mature. The following year, however, the Pope issued the decretal Ad conditorem canonum, against which Brother Bonagratia of Bergamo appealed, considering it contrary to the interests of his order.
The Pope then took down that decretal from the doors of the church of Avignon where it had been exposed, and revised it in several places. But he actually made it harsher, as was proved by the fact that, as an immediate consequence, Brother Bonagratia was held in prison for a year. Nor could there be any doubts as to the Pontiff’s severity, because that same year he issued the now very well known Cum inter nonnullos, in which the theses of the Perugia chapter were definitively condemned.
Politely interrupting Abo at this point, Cardinal Bertrand spoke up, saying we should recall how, to complicate matters and to irritate the Pontiff, in 1324 Louis the Bavarian had intervened with the Declaration of Sachsenhausen, in which for no good reason he confirmed the theses of Perugia (nor was it comprehensible, Bertrand remarked, with a thin smile, that the Emperor should acclaim so enthusiastically a poverty he did not practice in the least), setting himself against the lord Pope, calling him inimicus pacis and saying he was bent on fomenting scandal and discord, and finally calling him a heretic, indeed a heresiarch.
“Not exactly,” Abo ventured, trying to mediate.
“In substance, yes,” Bertrand said sharply. And he added that it was precisely the Emperor’s inopportune meddling that had obliged the lord Pope to issue the decretal Quia quorundam, and that eventually he had sternly bidden Michael of Cesena to appear before him. Michael had sent letters of excuse, declaring himself ill—something no one doubted—and had sent in his stead Brother John Fidanza and Brother Umile Custodio from Perugia. But it so happened, the cardinal went on, that the Guelphs of Perugia had informed the Pope that, far from being ill, Brother Michael was in communication with Louis of Bavaria.
In any case, what
