What Bernard wanted was clear. Without the slightest interest in knowing who had killed the other monks, he wanted only to show that Remigio somehow shared the ideas propounded by the Emperor’s theologians. And once he had shown the connection between those ideas, which were also those of the chapter of Perugia, and the ideas of the Fraticelli and the Dolcinians, and had shown that one man in that abbey subscribed to all those heresies and had been the author of many crimes, he would thus have dealt a truly mortal blow to his adversaries. I looked at
William and saw that he had understood but could do nothing, even though he had foreseen it all.
I looked at the abbot and saw his face was grim: he was realizing, belatedly, that he, too, had been drawn into a trap, and that his own authority as mediator was crumbling, now that he was going to appear to be lord of a place where all the evils of the century had chosen to assemble. As for the cellarer, by now he no longer knew of what crime he might still try to proclaim his innocence.
But perhaps at that moment he was incapable of any calculation; the cry that escaped his throat was the cry of his soul, and in it and with it he was releasing years of long and secret remorse. Or, rather, after a life of uncertainties, enthusiasms, and disappointments, cowardice and betrayal, faced with the ineluctability of his ruin, he decided to profess the faith of his youth, no longer asking himself whether it was right or wrong, but as if to prove to himself that he was capable of some faith.
“Yes, it is true,” he shouted, “I was with Dolcino, and I shared in his crimes, his license; perhaps I was mad, I confused the love of our Lord Jesus Christ with the need for freedom and with hatred of bishops. It is true that I have sinned, but I am innocent of everything that has happened in the abbey, I swear!”
“For the present we have achieved something,” Bernard said, “since you admit having practiced the heresy of the Dolcinians, the witch Margaret, and her companions. Do you admit being with them near Trivero, when they hanged many faithful Christians, including an innocent child of ten? And when they hanged other men in the presence of their wives and parents because they would not submit to the whim of those dogs? Because, by then, blinded by your fury and pride, you thought no one could be saved unless he belonged to your community? Speak!”
“Yes, I believed those things and did those things!”
“And you were present when they captured some followers of the bishops and starved some to death in prison, and they cut off the arm and the hand of a woman with child, leaving her then to give birth to a baby who immediately died, unbaptized? And you were with them when they set fire and razed to the ground the villages of Mosso, Trivero, Cossila, and Clecchia, and many other localities in the zone of Crepacorio, and many houses of Mortiliano and Quorino, and they burned the church in Trivero after befouling the sacred images, tearing tombstones from the altars, breaking an arm of the statue of the Virgin, looting the chalices and vessels and books, destroying the spire, shattering the bells, seizing all the vessels of the confraternity and the possessions of the priest?”
“Yes, yes, I was there, and none of us knew what we were doing by then, we wanted to herald the moment of punishment, we were the vanguard of the Emperor sent by heaven and the holy Pope, we were to hasten the descent of the angel of Philadelphia, when all would receive the grace of the Holy Spirit and the church would be renewed, and after the destruction of all the perverse, only the perfect would reign!”
The cellarer seemed at once possessed and illuminated, the dam of silence and simulation now seemed broken, his past was returning not only in words but also in images, and he was feeling again the emotions that at one time had exalted him.
“So,” Bernard resumed, “you confess that you have revered Gherardo Segarelli as a martyr, that you have denied all power to the Roman church and declared that since the time of Saint Sylvester all the prelates of the church had been prevaricators and seducers except Peter of Morrone, that tithes should be paid to your sect alone, who are the only apostles and paupers of Christ, that you went through villages and seduced people crying ‘Penitenziagite,’ that you passed yourselves off as penitents and then allowed yourselves every license, every lustfulness, every offense to your bodies and the bodies of others? Speak!”
“Yes, yes, I confess the true faith which I then believed with my whole soul, I confess that we took off our garments in sign of renunciation, that we renounced all our belongings while you, race of dogs, will never renounce anything; and from that time on we never accepted money from anyone or carried any about our persons, and we lived on alms and we saved nothing for the morrow, and when they received us and set a table for us, we ate and went away, leaving on the table anything that remained. . . .”
“And you burned and looted to seize the possessions of good Christians!”
“And we burned and looted because we had proclaimed poverty the universal law, and we had the right to appropriate the illegitimate riches of others, and we wanted to strike at the heart of the network of greed that extended from parish to parish, but we never looted in order to possess, or killed in order to loot; we killed to punish, to purify the impure through blood, and Gherardo Segarelli had been a divine plant, planta Dei pullulans in radice fidei; our Rule came to us directly from God. We had to kill the innocent as well, in order to kill all of you more quickly.
We wanted a better world, of peace and sweetness and happiness for all, we wanted to kill the war that you brought on with your greed, because you reproached us when, to establish justice and happiness, we had to shed a little blood. . . . The fact is . . . the fact is that it did not take much, the hastening, and it was worth turning the waters of the Carnasco red that day at Stavello, there was our own blood, too, we did not spare ourselves, our blood and your blood, much of it, at once, immediately, the times of Dolcino’s prophecy were at hand, we had to hasten the course of events. . . .”
His whole body trembling, he rubbed his hands over his habit as if he wanted to cleanse them of the blood he was recalling. “The glutton has become pure again,” William said to me.
“But is this purity?” I asked, horrified.
“There must be some other kind as well,” William said, “but, however it is, it always frightens me.”
“What terrifies you most in purity?” I asked.
“Haste,” William answered.
“Enough, enough,” Bernard was saying now. “We sought a confession from you, not a summons to massacre. Very well, not only have you been a heretic: you are one still. Not only have you been a murderer: you have murdered again. Now tell us how you killed your brothers in this abbey, and why.”
The cellarer stopped trembling, looked around as if he were coming out of a dream. “No,” he said, “I have nothing to do with the crimes in the abbey. I have confessed everything I did: do not make me confess what I have not done. . . .”
“But what remains that you cannot have done? Do you now say you are innocent? O lamb, O model of meekness! You have heard him: he once had his hands steeped in blood and now he is innocent! Perhaps we were mistaken, Remigio of Varagine is a paragon of virtue, a loyal son of the church, an enemy of the enemies of Christ, he has always respected the order that the hand of the church has toiled to impose on villages and cities, the peace of trade, the craftsmen’s shops, the treasures of the churches. He is innocent, he has committed nothing. Here, come to my arms, Brother Remigio, that I may console you for the accusations that evil men have brought against you!” And as Remigio looked at him with dazed eyes, as if he were all of a sudden believing in a final absolution, Bernard resumed his demeanor and addressed the captain of the archers in a tone of command:
“It revolts me to have recourse to measures the church has always criticized when they are employed by the secular arm. But there is a law that governs and directs even my personal feelings. Ask the abbot to provide a place where the instruments of torture can be installed. But do not proceed at once. For three days let him remain in a cell, with his hands and feet in irons. Then have the instruments shown
