Hard passion and humble Calvary are the lot of him who has been called by God, like my own sinful person, to distinguish the viper of heresy wherever it may nest. But in carrying out this holy task, we learn that he who openly practices heresy is not the only kind of heretic. Heresy’s supporters can be distinguished by five indicators. First, there are those who visit heretics secretly when they are in prison; second, those who lament their capture and have been their intimate friends (it is, in fact, unlikely that one who has spent much time with a heretic remains ignorant of his activity); third, those who declare the heretics have been unjustly condemned, even when their guilt has been proved; fourth, those who look askance and criticize those who persecute heretics and preach against them successfully, and this can be discovered from the eyes, nose, the expression they try to conceal, showing hatred toward those for whom they feel bitterness and love toward those whose misfortune so grieves them; the fifth sign, finally, is the fact that they collect the charred bones of burned heretics and make them an object of veneration. . . . But I attach great value also to a sixth sign, and I consider open friends of heretics the authors of those books where (even if they do not openly offend orthodoxy) the heretics have found the premises with which to syllogize in their perverse way.”
As he spoke, he was looking at Ubertino. The whole French legation understood exactly what Bernard meant. By now the meeting had failed, and no one would dare repeat the discussion of that morning, knowing that every word would be weighed in the light of these latest, disastrous events. If Bernard had been sent by the Pope to prevent a reconciliation between the two groups, he had succeeded.
VESPERS
In which Ubertino takes flight, Benno begins to observe the laws, and William makes some reflections on the various types of lust encountered that day.
As the monks slowly emerged from the chapter house, Michael came over to William, and then both of them were joined by Ubertino. Together we all went out into the open, to confer in the cloister under cover of the fog, which showed no sign of thinning out. Indeed, it was made even thicker by the shadows.
“Bernard has defeated us. Don’t ask me whether that imbecile Dolcinian is really guilty of all those crimes. As far as I can tell, he isn’t, not at all. The fact is, we are back where we started. John wants you alone in Avignon, Michael, and this meeting hasn’t given you the guarantees we were looking for. On the contrary, it has given you an idea of how every word of yours, up there, could be distorted. Whence we must deduce, it seems to me, that you should not go.”
Michael shook his head. “I will go, on the contrary. I do not want a schism. You, William, spoke very clearly today, and you said what you would like. Well, that is not what I want, and I realize that the decisions of the Perugia chapter have been used by the imperial theologians beyond our intentions. I want the Franciscan order to be accepted by the Pope with its ideal of poverty. And the Pope must understand that unless the order confirms the ideal of poverty, it will never be possible for it to recover the heretical offshoots. I will go to Avignon, and if necessary I will make an act of submission to John. I will compromise on everything except the principle of poverty.”
Ubertino spoke up. “You know you are risking your life?”
“So be it,” Michael answered. “Better than risking my soul.”
He did seriously risk his life, and if John was right (as I still do not believe), Michael also lost his soul. As everyone knows by now, Michael went to the Pope a week after the events I am narrating. He held out against him for four months, until in April of the following year John convened a consistory in which he called Michael a madman, a reckless, stubborn, tyrannical fomentor of heresy, a viper nourished in the very bosom of the church. And one might think that, according to his way of seeing things, John was right, because during those four months Michael had become a friend of my master’s friend, the other William, the one from Occam, and had come to share his ideas—more extreme, but not very different from those my master shared with Marsilius and had expounded that morning.
The life of these dissidents became precarious in Avignon, and at the end of May, Michael, William of Occam, Bonagratia of Bergamo, Francis of Ascoli, and Henri de Talheim took flight, pursued by the Pope’s men to Nice, then Toulon, Marseilles, and Aigues-Mortes, where they were overtaken by Cardinal Pierre de Arrablay, who tried to persuade them to go back but was unable to overcome their resistance, their hatred of the Pontiff, their fear. In June they reached Pisa, where they were received in triumph by the imperial forces, and in the following months Michael was to denounce John publicly. Too late, by then.
The Emperor’s fortunes were ebbing; from Avignon John was plotting to give the Minorites a new superior general, and he finally achieved victory. Michael would have done better not to decide that day to go to the Pope: he could have led the Minorites’ resistance more closely, without wasting so many months in his enemy’s power, weakening his own position. . . . But perhaps divine omnipotence had so ordained things—nor do I know now who among them all was in the right. After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth.
But I am straying into melancholy digressions. I must tell instead of the end of that sad conversation. Michael had made up his mind, and there was no way of convincing him to desist. But another problem arose, and William announced it without mincing words: Ubertino himself was no longer safe. The words Bernard had addressed to him, the hatred the Pope now felt toward him, the fact that, whereas Michael still represented a power with which to negotiate, Ubertino was a party unto himself at this point . . .
“John wants Michael at court and Ubertino in hell. If I know Bernard, before tomorrow is over, with the complicity of the fog, Ubertino will be killed. And if anyone asks who did it, the abbey can easily bear another crime, and they will say it was done by devils summoned by Remigio and his black cats, or by some surviving Dolcinian still lurking inside these walls. . . .”
Ubertino was worried. “Then—?” he asked.
“Then,” William said, “go and speak with the abbot. Ask him for a mount, some provisions, and a letter to some distant abbey, beyond the Alps. And take advantage of the darkness and the fog to leave at once.”
“But are the archers not still guarding the gates?”
“The abbey has other exits, and the abbot knows them. A servant has only to be waiting for you at one of the lower curves with a horse; and after slipping through some passage in the walls, you will have only to go through a stretch of woods. You must act immediately, before Bernard recovers from the ecstasy of his triumph. I must concern myself with something else. I had two missions: one has failed, at least the other must succeed. I want to get my hands on a book, and on a man. If all goes well, you will be out of here before I seek you again. So farewell, then.” He opened his arms. Moved, Ubertino held him in a close embrace: “Farewell, William. You are a mad and arrogant Englishman, but you have a great heart. Will we meet again?”
“We will meet again,” William assured him. “God will wish it.”
God, however, did not wish it. As I have already said, Ubertino died, mysteriously killed, two years later. A hard and adventurous life, the life of this mettlesome and ardent old man. Perhaps he was not a saint, but I hope God rewarded his adamantine certainty of being one. The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God’s will, the less I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do; and as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions. And Ubertino surely had great faith in the blood and agony of our Lord Crucified.
Perhaps I was thinking these things even then, and the old mystic realized it, or guessed that I would think them one day. He smiled at me sweetly and embraced me, without the intensity with which he had sometimes gripped me in the preceding days. He embraced me as a grandfather embraces his grandson, and in the same spirit I returned the embrace. Then he went off with Michael to seek the abbot.
“And now?” I asked William.
“And now, back to our crimes.”
“Master,” I said, “today many things happened, grave things for Christianity, and our mission has failed. And yet you seem
