The Name of the Rose II/II 🇬🇧 CC/Subtitles ⚓ by Umberto Eco – Part II of II

Was the meek air he looked at William as if to indicate he was ready to tell whatever he was asked. Last night there was a woman in the kitchen who was with her. All female who sells herself like mitochondria cannot be bala or have cortese or. Salvatore recited.

I don’t want to know whether the girl is pure i want to know who was with her. Dare you. These evil females are all clever. They think da not care about how to trap a man. William seized him roughly by the chest. Who was with her you or the seller.

Salvatore realized he couldn’t go on lying. He began to tell a strange story. From which with great effort we learned that to please the celery he procured girls for him in the village. Introducing them within the walls at night by paths he would not reveal to us.

But he swore he acted out of the sheer goodness of his heart art. Betraying a comic regret that he could not find a way to enjoy his own pleasure and see that the girl. Having satisfied the seller would give something also to him. He said all this with slimy lubricious smiles and winks.

As if to suggest he was speaking to men made of flesh accustomed to such practices. He stole glances at me nor could i check him as i would have liked. Because i felt myself bound to him by a common secret. His accomplice and companion in sin.

At this point William decided to stake everything. He asked Salvatore abruptly. Did you know remedial before or after you were with to chino. Salvatore knelt at his feet begging him between sobs not to destroy him to save him from the inquisition. William solemnly swore not to tell anyone what he would learn

And Salvatore did not hesitate to deliver the celery into our hands. The two men had met on bald mountain both in dolci noseband. Salvatore and the seller had fled together and had entered the convent of casale and still together they had joined the Clooney acts. As he stammered out pleas for forgiveness.

It was clear there was nothing further to be learned from him. William decided it was worth taking remedial by surprise. And he left Salvatore aranda seek refuge in the church. The celery was on the opposite side of the Abbey in front of the granary is bargaining with some peasants from the valley.

He looked at us apprehensively and tried to act very busy but William insisted on speaking with him. For reasons connected with your position you are obviously forced to move about the Abbey even when the others are asleep i imagine. William said. That depends remedial answered. Sometimes there are little matters to deal

With and i have to sacrifice a few hours sleep. Has nothing happened to you in these cases that might indicate there is someone else roaming about. Without your justification between the kitchen and the library. If i had seen anything i would have told the Abbot. Of course William agreed

And abruptly changed the subject. The village down below is not very rich is it. Yes and no. Remedial answered. Some presenters live there Abby dependence and they share our wealth and the good years. For example. On st John’s day they received twelve bushels of malt a horse seven oxen a bull

For heifers five calves twenty sheep fifteen pigs fifty chickens and seventeen hives. Also twenty smoked pigs twenty seven tubs of lard. Hatha measure of honey three measures of soap efficient that. I understand i understand William interrupted him. But you must admit that this still tells me nothing of the situation of the village.

How many among it’s inhabitants have province and how much land those who are not prebendary possess to cultivate on their own. Or as far as that goes remedios said. A normal family down there has as much as fifty tablets of land. How much is a tablet. For square to boogie of course.

Square to bookie. How much are they. Thirty six square feet as a square trouble go. Or if you prefer eight hundred linear trabuco make a piedmont mile. And calculate that the family in the lands to the north can cultivate olives for at least half a sack of oil. Half a sack.

Yes one sack makes by them in a and one eminem makes eight cups. I see my master said disheartened. Every locality has it’s own measures. Do you measure wine for example by the tankard. Or by the rubio. Six Ruby a make one Brenda and eight Brent a keg.

If you like one rubio is six points from two tankards. I believe my ideas are clear now William said resigned. Do you wish to know anything else remedial asked with a tone that seemed to me defiant.

Yes i was asking you about how they live in the valley because today in the library i was meditating on the sermons to women by humbert of romans. And in particular on that chapter odd malarious pump varies invalid please. In which he says that they more than others are

Tempted to sins of the flesh because of their poverty and wisely he says that they commit mortal sin when they sin with a layman but the mortality of the sin becomes greater when it is committed with a priest and greatest of all when the sin

With a monk who is dead to the world. You know better than i that even in holy places such as abbeys the temptations of the noontime devil i never wanting. I was wondering whether in your contacts with the people of the village you had heard

That some monks god forbid had induced maidens into fornication. Although my master said these things in an almost absent tone. My reader can imagine how the words upset the poor celery. I cannot say he blanched but i will say that i was so

Expecting him to turn pale that i saw him look whiter. You asked me about things that i would already have told the Abbot if i knew them. He answered humbly. In any case if as i imagine this information serves for your investigation. I will not keep silent about anything i may learn.

Indeed now that you remind me. With regard to your first question. The night for a download died i was stirring about the yard a question of the hinge you know. I had heard rumors that one of the blacksmiths was stealing from the chicken coops at night. Yes.

That night i did happen to see from the distance i couldn’t swear to it. Baron gar going back into the dormitory moving along the choir as if he had come from the inefficient. I wasn’t surprised. There had been whispering about their anger among the monks for some time perhaps you’ve heard. No

Tell me. Well. How can i say. Barren gar was suspected of harboring passions that. That are not proper for a monk. Are you perhaps trying to tell me he had relations with village girls as i was asking you. The seller coughed embarrassed and flashed a somewhat obscene smile. Vulnerable. Even less proper passions.

Then a monk who enjoys carnal satisfaction with the village made his indulging and passions on the other hand that are somehow proper. I didn’t say that. But you’ll agree that there is a hierarchy of depravity as there is a virtue. The flesh can be tempted according to nature and. Against nature.

You’re telling me that baron guy was impelled by carnal desires for those of his own sex. I’m saying that such with the whisperings. I’m informing you of these things as proof of my sincerity and my goodwill. And i thank you. And i agree with you that the sin of sodomy is

Far worse than other forms of lust which frankly i am not inclined to investigate. Sad wretched things even if they prove to have taken place the seller said philosophically. Yes remedial. We are all wretched sinners i would never seek the moat in a brother’s eyes since

I am so afraid of having a great theme in my own. But i will be grateful to you for any beams you may mentioned to me in the future. So we will talk great sturdy trunks of wood and we will allow the motor to swirl in the air.

How much did you say a square trabuco was. Thirty six square feet but you mustn’t waste your time when you wish to know something specific come to me. Consider me a faithful friend. I do consider you as such William said warmly. Who bettino told me that he once belonged to my own order.

I would never betray a former brother. Especially in these days when we are awaiting the arrival of a papal legation led by a grand inquisitor famous for having burned many dull Chileans. You said a square to buko equals thirty six square feet. The seller was no fool.

He decided it was no longer worthwhile playing at cat and mouse particularly since he realized he was the mouse. Brother William he said. I see you know many more things than i imagined. Help me and I’ll help you. It’s true i am a poor man of flesh

And i succumb to the lure of the flesh. Salvatore told me that you or your novice caught them last night in the kitchen. You’ll have travelled widely William you know that not even the cardinals in avignon are models of virtue. I know you’re not questioning me because of these wretched little sins.

But i also realize you have learned something of my past. I have had a strange life like many a us minor rights. Years ago i believed in the ideal of poverty and i abandoned the community delivers a vagabond. I believed in do nose preaching as many others like me did.

I am not an educated man I’ve been ordained but i can barely say mass. I know little of theology. And perhaps i’m not really moved by ideas. You see. I once tried to rebel against the overlords. Now i serve them

And for the sake of the lord of these lands i give orders to men like myself. Betray or rebel with i have little choice. Sometimes the simple understand things better than the learned William said. Perhaps the seller said with a shrug. But i don’t even know why i did what i did then.

You see. For Salvatore it was comprehensible. His parents were serfs he came from a childhood of hardship and illness. The chino represented rebellion the destruction of the lords. For me it was different i came from a city family i wasn’t running away from hunger it was. I dunno how to say it.

A feast of fools magnificent carnival. On the mountains was tall chino before we were reduced to eating the flesh of our companions killed in battle. Before so many died of hardship that we couldn’t eat them all and they were thrown to the birds in the wire animals on the slopes of rebello.

Or maybe in those moments too. There was an atmosphere. Can i say of freedom. I didn’t know before what freedom was the preachers said to us the truth will make you free. We felt free we thought that was the truth. We thought everything we were doing was right. And there you took

To uniting yourself freely with women i asked. And i don’t even know why but since the night before. Puberty nose words had been haunting me along with what i had read in the scriptorium and the events that had befallen me. William looked at me curious.

He had probably not expected me to be so bold and outspoken. The seller stared at me as if i were a strange animal. On rebelo he said there were people who throughout their childhood had slept. Ten or more of them in a room of a few cubits. Brothers and sisters fathers and daughters.

What do you think this new situation meant to them. They did from choice what they had formerly done from necessity. And then at night when you fear the arrival of the enemy troops nuclear tied to your neighbor on the ground so as not to feel cold. The heretics.

Your pitiful monks who come from a castle and end up in an Abbey think that it’s a form of belief inspired by the devil. But it’s a way of living and it is. It was. A new experience. There were no more masters and god we were told was with us.

I’m not saying we were right William and in fact you find me here because i abandoned them before long. But i never really understood our learned disputes about the poverty of Christ and ownership and rights. I told you it was a great carnival and in carnival time everything is done backward.

As you grow old you grow not wise but greedy. And here i am a glutton. You can condemn a heretic to death but would you condemn a glutton. That’s enough remedial William said. I’m not questioning you about what happened then but about what happened recently.

Be frank with me and i will surely not seek your downfall. I cannot and would not judge you but you must tell me what you know about events in the Abbey. You move about too much night and day not to know something. Who killed finances. I do not know.

I give you my solemn oath. I know when he died and where. When where. I’ll tell you. That night an hour after goblin i went into the kitchen. How did you enter and for what reasons. By the door of the vegetable garden.

I have a key i had the smiths make from a long ago. The kitchen door is the only one not barred on the inside. And my reasons. Are not important. You said yourself you don’t want to condemn me for my weakness of the flesh. He smiled embarrassed.

But i wouldn’t want you to believe i spent my days in fornication either. That night i was looking for food to give to the girl Salvatore was to bring into the kitchen. Where from. All the outside walls of other entrances besides the gate. The Abbot knows them i know them.

But that evening the girl didn’t come in i sent her back precisely because of what i discovered what i’m about to tell you. This is why i tried to have her return last night. If you’d arrived a bit later you would have found me instead Salvatore.

It was he who warned me there were people in heat officiel. So i went back to my cell. Let’s return to the night between Sunday and Monday. Yes then. I entered the kitchen and on the floor i saw of an anxious dead. In the kitchen. Yes near the sink.

Perhaps he had just come down from the scriptorium. No sign of a struggle. None. Though there was a broken cup beside the body and traces of water on the ground. How do you know it was water. I don’t know i thought it was water what else might it have been.

As William pointed out to me later that cup could mean two different things. Either someone had given finances a poison potion to drink right there in the kitchen. Or else the poor youth had already taken the poison but where and when. And had come down to drink to soothe the sudden burning

A spasm of pain that seared his viscera or his tongue. For certainly his must have been black like baron gars. In any case we could learn no more for the moment. Having glanced at the corpse terrified remedial asked himself what he should do and decided he would do nothing.

If he sought help he would have to admit that he had been wandering around the eat fish him at night. Nor would it do his now lost brother any good. Therefore he resolved to leave things as they were waiting for someone else to

Discover the body in the morning when the doors were opened. He rushed ahead of Salvatore who was already bringing the girl into the Abbey. Then he and his accomplice went off to sleep if they’re agitated vigil till Madden’s could be called at.

And at madness when the swine herds brought the news to the Abbot remedial believed the body had been discovered where he had left it and was aghast to find it in the jar. Who had spirited the corpse out of the kitchen. For this remedial had no explanation.

The only one who can move freely about the eda fish him as maliki William said. The seller or reacted violently. No not maliki. That is. I don’t believe. In any case i didn’t say anything to you against maliki. Rest assured whatever your data to maliki may be. Does he know something about you.

Yes. The seller or blushed. And he has behaved like a man of discretion. If i were you i would keep an eye on benaud. He had strange connections with baron garren been anxious. But i swear to you I’ve seen nothing else if i learned something I’ll tell you.

For the present this will do I’ll seek you out again if i need you. The seller obviously relieved returned to his dealings sharply reproaching the peasants who in the meantime and apparently shifted some sacks of seeds. At that point severin has joined us in his hand he was carrying Williams lenses

The ones stolen two nights before. I found them inside their engaged habit he said i saw them on your nose the other day in the scriptorium they are yours aren’t they. God be praised William cried joyously we’ve solved two problems i have my lenses and i finally know for sure that it was

Baron guy who rubbed us the other night in the scriptorium. We had barely finished speaking when Nicholas of more Amanda came running up even more triumphant than William. In his hands he held a finished pair of lenses. Mounted on their fork. William he cried i did it all by myself i finished them

I believe they’ll work. Then he saw that William had other lenses on his nose and he was stunned. William didn’t want to humiliate him he took off his old lenses and tried on the new ones. These are better than the others he said.

So I’ll keep the old ones as a spare pair and will always use yours. Then he turned to me. And so now i shall withdraw to my cell to read those papers you know about. At last. Wait for me somewhere. And thank you thank all of you dearest brothers.

Terse was ringing and i went to the choir to recite with the others the hymn the psalms the verses and the carrier. The others were praying for the soul of the dead baron gar. I was thanking god for having allowed us to find not one but two pairs of lenses.

In that great piece forgetting all the ugly things i had seen and heard i dozed off waking only as the office ended. I realized i hadn’t slept that night and i was distressed to think also how i had expended much of my strength. And at this point

Coming out into the fresh air i began to find my thoughts obsessed by the memory of the girl. Trying to distract myself i began to stride rapidly over the grounds. I felt a slight dizziness. I clapped my numbed hands together i stamped my feet on the earth. I was still sleepy

And yet i felt awake and full of life. I could not understand what was happening to me. Terse. In which ad so rise then the torments of love. Then William arrives with an anxious as text which remains undecipherable even after it has been deciphered. To tell the truth

The other terrible events following my sinful encounter with the girl had caused me almost to forget that occurrence. And once i had confessed to brother William my spirit was relieved of the remorse i had felt on waking after my guilty lapse. So it was as if i had handed over to the monk

With my words the burden itself of which they were the signifying voice. What is the purpose of the holy cleansing of confession. If not to unload the weight of sin and the remorse it involves into the very bosom of our lord obtaining with absolution a new and airy lightness of soul

Such as to make us forget the body tormented by wickedness. But i was not freed from everything. Now as i walked in the cold pale sun of that winter morning surrounded by the fervor of men and animals. I began to remember my experiences in a different way. As if

From everything that had happened my repentance and the consoling words of the penitential cleansing no longer remained but only visual. At ease and human limbs. Into my feverish mind came abruptly the ghost of baron gar swollen with water and i shuddered with revulsion and pity.

Then as if to dispel that lemur my mind turned to other images of which the memory was a fresh receptacle. And i could not avoid seeing clear before my eyes the eyes of the soul but almost as if it appeared before my fleshly eyes. The image of the girl

Beautiful and terrible as an army arrayed for battle. I have vowed aged a man who answers of a text till now unwritten though for long decades it has spoken in my mind. To be a faithful chronicler not only out of love for the truth or the desire worthy though it be

To instruct my future readers. But also out of a need to free my memory dried up and weary of visions that have troubled it for a whole lifetime time. Therefore i must tell everything. Decently but without shame. And i must say now and clearly what i thought

Then and almost tried to conceal from myself. Walking over the ground sometimes breaking into a run so that i might attribute to the motion of my body the sudden pounding of my heart. Or stopping to admire the work of the lanes. Deluding myself that i was being distracted by such contemplation.

Breathing the cold air deeply into my lungs as a man drinks wine to forget fear or sorrow. In vain. I thought of the girl. My flesh had forgotten the intense pleasure. Sinful and fleeting a base thing. That union with her had given me but my soul had not forgotten her face

And could not manage to feel that this memory was perverse. Rather it throbbed as if in that face shown all the bliss of creation. I sensed in a confused way and almost denying to myself the truth of what i felt. That the poor filthy impudent creature who sold herself.

Who knows with what stubborn constancy to other sinners. That daughter of Eve week like all her sisters. Who had so often bartered her own flesh. Was yet something splendid and wondrous. My intellect knew her as an occasion of sin. My sensitive appetite perceived her as the vessel of every grace.

It is difficult to say what i felt. I could try to ride that still caught in the snares of sin i desired culpably for her to appear at every moment and i spied on the labor of the workers to see whether

Around the corner of a hot door from the darkness of a barn that form that had seduced me might emerge. But i would not be writing the truth or rather i would be attempting to draw a veil over the truth to attenuate it’s force and clarity. Because the truth is.

That i saw the girl. I saw her in the branches of the bare tree that stirred lightly when a bynum sparrow flew to seek refuge there. I saw her in the eyes of the heifers that came out of the barn.

And i heard her in the bleating of the sheep that crossed my erratic path. It was as if all creation spoke to me of her and i desired to see her again true. But i was also prepared to accept the idea of never seeing her again and have never lying again with her

Provided that i could savor the joy that filled me that morning and have her always near even if she were to be and for eternity distant. It was now i am trying to understand as if just as the whole universe is surely like a book written by the finger of god.

In which everything speaks to us of the immense goodness of it’s creator in which every creature is description and mirror of life and death. In which the humblest Rose becomes a glass of our terrestrial progress. Everything in other words spoke to me only of the face i

Had hardly glimpsed in the aromatic shadows of the kitchen. I dwelled on these fantasies because i said to myself. Or rather did not say. At that moment i did not formulate thoughts translatable into words. That if the whole world is destined to speak to me

Of the power goodness and wisdom of the creator. And if that morning the whole world spoke to me of the girl who sinner though she may have been. Was nevertheless chapter in the great book of creation averse of the great somme chanted by the cosmos. I said to myself i say now

That if this occurred. It could only be a part of the great the authentic design that sustains the universe. Arranged like a liar miracle of consonance and Harmony. As if intoxicated i then enjoyed her presence in the things i saw and desiring her in them. With the sight of them i was seated.

And yet i felt a kind of sorrow because at the same time i suffered from an absence though i was happy with the many ghosts have a presence. It is difficult for me to explain this mystery of contradiction sign that the human

Spirit is fragile and never proceeds directly along the paths of divine reason. Which has built the world as a perfect syllogism but instead grasps only isolated and often disjointed propositions of this syllogism. Whence derives the ease with which we fall victims to the deceptions of the evil one.

Was it the deception of the evil one that morning that so moved me. I think today that it was because i was a novice. But i think that the human feeling that stirred me was not bad in itself but only with regard to my state.

Because in itself it was the feeling that moves man toward woman so that the one couples with the other. As the apostle of the gen tiles once. And that both be flesh of one flesh and that together they procreate new human beings and succor each other from youth to old age.

Only the apostle spoke thus for those who seek a remedy for lust and who do not wish to burn. Recalling however that the condition of chastity is far preferable. The condition to which as a monk i had conseco hated myself. And therefore what i suffered that morning was

Evil for me but for others perhaps was good. The sweetest of good things. Thus i understand now that my distress was not due to the depravity of my thoughts. In themselves worthy and sweet but to the depravity of the gap between my thoughts and the vows i had pronounced.

And therefore i was doing evil and enjoying something that was good in one situation bad in another. And my fault lay in trying to reconcile natural appetite and the dictates of the rational soul. Now i know that i was suffering from the conflict between the illicit appetite of the intellect.

In which the wheels rule should have been displayed and the illicit appetite of the senses so subject to human passions. In fact as aquinas says the acts of the sensitive appetite are called passions precisely because they involve a bodily change. And my appetite of act was as it happened

Accompanied by a trembling of the whole body. By a physical impulse to cry out and to rise. The angelic doctor says that the passions in themselves are not evil but they must be governed by the will led by the rational soul. But my rational soul that morning was dazed by

Weariness which kept in check the irascible appetite. Addressed to good and evil as terms of conquest but not the can coopers and appetite addressed to good and evil as known entities. To justify my irresponsible recklessness of that time. I will say now that i was unquestionably seized by love

Which his passion and his cosmic law. Because the weight of bodies is actually natural love. And by this passion i was naturally seduced and i understood why the angelic doctor said that. A moralist money’s gone to boost quam cognito. That we know things better through love than through knowledge.

In fact i now saw the girl better than i had seen her the previous night and i understood her interest in kuti because in her i understood myself and in myself her. I now wonder whether what i felt was the love of friendship

In which like loves like and wants only the others good. Or love of control percents in which one wants one’s own good and the lacking wants only what completes it. And i believe that the nighttime love had been coopers and four i wanted from the girl something i had never had.

Whereas that morning i wanted nothing from the girl and i wanted only her good and i wished her to be saved from the cruel necessity that drove her to barter herself for a bit of food. And i wished her to be happy. Nor did i want to ask anything further of her

But only to think of her and see her in sheep oxen trees. In the serene light that bathed in happiness the grounds of the Abbey. Now i know that good is cause of love and that which is good is defined by knowledge and you can only love what you have learned is good.

Whereas i had indeed learned that the girl was the good of the irascible appetite but the evil of the will. But i was in the grip of so many and such conflicting emotions because when i felt was like the holiest love just as the doctors describe it.

It produced in me that ecstasy in which lover and beloved want the same thing and by mysterious enlightenment i in that moment. Knew that the girl wherever she was wanted the same things i myself wanted. And for her i felt jealousy

But not the evil kind condemned by Paul in first corinthians but that which dionysus speaks of in the divine name ys whereby god also was called jealous because of the great love he feels for all creation. And i love the girl precisely because she existed

And i was happy not envious that she existed. I was jealous in the way in which for the angelic doctor jealousy is motors in a madam the jealousy of friendship which inspires us to move against all that harms the beloved.

And i dreamed at that moment only of freeing the girl from the power of him who was buying her flesh and the fouling it with his own infamous passions. Now i know as the doctor says that love can harm the lover when it is excessive. And mine was excessive.

I have tried to explain what i felt then not in the least to justify what i felt. I am speaking of what were my sinful archers of youth. They were bad but truth obliges me to say that at the time i i felt them to be extremely good.

And let this serve to instruct anyone who may fall as i did into the nets of temptation. Today an old man. I would know a thousand ways of evading such seductions. And i wonder how proud of them i should be since i am free of the temptations of the noontime devil

But not free from others. Asked myself whether what i am now doing is not as sinful succumbing to the terrestrial passion of recollection. A foolish attempt to elude the flow of time and death. Then i saved myself as if by miraculous instinct.

The girl appeared to me in nature and in the works of man that surrounded me. I sought then. Thanks to a happy intuition of my soul to lose myself in the relaxed contemplation of those works. I observed the cowards as they lead the oxen out of the stable.

The swine herds taking food to the pigs. The Shepherds shouting to the dogs to collect the sheep. Peasants carrying cracked wheat and millet to the mills and coming out with sacks of good food. I lost myself in the contemplation of nature

Trying to forget my thoughts and to look only at beings as they appear and to forget myself joyfully in the sight of them. How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man. I saw the lamb

To which this name was given as if in recognition of it’s purity and goodness. In fact the noun Agnes derives from the fact that this animal ignore sheet. It recognizes it’s mother and recognizes her voice in the midst of the flock while the mother among many lambs have the same form

With the same bleeding recognizes all always and only her offspring and nourishes him. I saw the sheep which is called ovis from abo blood sione. Because from earliest times it served for sacrificial rice. The sheep which as is it’s habit as winter approaches seeks grass greedily and stuffs itself with

Forage before the pastures are seared by frost. And the flocks were watched by dogs called carnies from the verb Conor because of their barking. The perfect animal among animals with superb gifts of perception. The dog recognizes it’s master and is trained to hunt wild animals in the forests to guard flocks against wolves.

It protects the master’s house and his children and sometimes times in its office of defense it is killed. Can get a man who had been taken away to prison by his enemies was brought back to his homeland by a pack of two hundred dogs who made their way past the enemy troops.

The dog of Jason licious after it’s master’s death persisted in refusing food until it died of starvation. And the dog of king ly simic as threw himself on his master’s funeral pyre to die with him. The dog has the power to heal wounds by licking them with his tongue

And the tongue of his puppies can heal intestinal lesions. By nature he is accustomed to making second use of the same food after vomiting it. Is sobriety is the symbol of perfection of spirit. As the thaumaturgical power of his tongue is the symbol of the purification of sins through confess ashen and penance.

But the dogs returning to his vomit is also a sign that after confession we return to the same sins as before and this moral was very useful to me that morning to admonish my heart. As i admired the wonders of nature.

Meanwhile my steps were taking me to the auctions stable where they were coming out in great number led by their drovers. They immediately appeared to me as they were and are symbols of friendship and goodness. Because every ox at his work turns to seek his companion at the plow.

If by chance the partner is absent at that moment. The ox calls him with affectionate lowing. Oxen learn obediently to go back by themselves to the barn when it rains and when they take refuge at the main sure they constantly stretch their necks to

Look out and see whether the bad weather has stopped. Because they are eager to resume work. With the oxen at that moment also came from the barn the calves whose name the tuli derives from very de tas or from virago. Because at that age they are still fresh young and chased.

And i had done wrong and was still wrong i said to myself to see in their graceful movements an image of the girl who was not chased. I thought of these things again at peace with the world and with myself. Observing the Mary toil of that morning hour.

And i thought no more of the girl or rather. I made an effort to transform the ardor i felt for her. Into a sense of inner happiness and about peace. I said to myself that the world was good and admirable.

That the goodness of god is made manifest also in the most horrid beasts. As honorius Augusta done answers explains. It is true there are serpents so huge that they devour stags and swim across the ocean.

There is the best teus and a croaker with an ass his body the horns of an ibex it’s the chest and more of a lion. A horse’s hoofs but cloven like an ox has. A slit from the mouth that reaches the years and almost human voice

And in the place of teeth a single solid bone. And there is the manta core with a man’s face triple set of teeth lions body scorpions tail. Glaucous eyes the color of blood and a voice like the hissing of snakes greedy for human flesh. And there are monsters with a toes wolf’s muzzle

Hooked talons sheep’s fleece and dogs back who in old age turned black instead of white and who outlive us by many years. There are creatures with eyes on their shoulders and two holes in the chest instead of nostrils because they lack ahead. And other the dwell along the river Ganges

Who live only on the odor of a certain apple and when they go away from it they die. But even all these foul beasts sing in their variety the praises of the creator and his wisdom as do the dog and the ox the sheep and the lamb and the links.

How great i said to myself then repeating the words of Vincent belliveau chances. The humblest beauty of this world and how pleasing to the eye of reason the consideration of not only the modes and numbers and orders of things so decorously established for the whole universe

But also the cycle of times that constantly unravel through successions and lapses. Marked by the death of what has been born. I confess that sinner as i am my soul only for a little while still prisoner of the flesh. I was moved then by spiritual sweetness

Toward the creator and the rule of this world. And with joyous veneration i admired the greatness and the stability of creation. I was in this good frame of mind when my master came upon me. Drawn by my feet and without realizing it i had almost circled the Abbey and found

Myself back where we had parted two hours before. There was William and what he told me jolted me from my thoughts and directed my mind again to the obscure mysteries of the Abbey. William seemed well pleased in his hand he had been anxious as parchment which he had finally deciphered.

We went to his cell far from indiscreet ears and he translated for me what he had read. After the sentence in the dial alphabet. Sacred to him finish Africa manu’s supra eidolon premium at septiembre de quatre. This is what the Greek text said. The terrible poison that gives purification.

The best weapon for destroying the enemy. Use humble persons base and ugly take pleasure from their defect. They must not die. Not in the houses of the noble and the powerful but from the peasants villages after abundant meal and libations. Squat bodies deformed faces.

They raped virgins and lie with whores not evil without fear. A different truth a day current image of the truth. The venerable figs. The shameless stone rolls over the plane. Before the eyes. Deceit is necessary and to surprise and deceit to say the opposite of what is believed

To say one thing and mean another. To them the cicadas will sing from the ground. That was all. In my opinion too little almost nothing. The words seemed the ravings of a madman and i said as much to William. Perhaps. And it surely seems even matter thanks to my translation.

My knowledge of Greek is rather scanty. And yet. Even if we assume that finances was mad or that the author of the book was mad this would not tell us why so many people not all of the mad went to great trouble first to hide the book and then to recover it.

But to the things written here come from the mysterious book. They are unquestionably things written by finances. You can see for yourself this is not an ancient parchment. And these must be notes taken down while he was reading the book otherwise finances would not have written in Greek.

He has certainly copied condensing them some sentences he found in the book stolen from Phineas Africa. He carried it to the scriptorium and began to read it noting down what seemed to him noteworthy. Then something happened. Either he fell ill. Or he heard someone coming up.

So he put the book with his notes under his desk probably planning to pick it up again the next evening. In any case this pages are only possible starting point and recreating the nature of the mysterious book and it’s only from the nature of that book that we

Will be able to infer the nature of the murderer. For and every crime committed to possess an object the nature of the object should give us an idea however faint of the nature of the assassin. If someone kills for a handful of gold he will be a greedy person. If for a book

He will be anxious to keep for himself oh the secrets of that book. So we must find out what is said in the book we do not have. And from these few lines will you be able to understand what that book is. Dear and so

These seem like the words of a holy text whose meaning goes beyond the letter. Reading then this morning after we had spoken with the seller. I was struck by the fact that here too there are references to the simple folk into peasants as bearers of a truth different from that of the wise.

Seller or hinted that some strange complicity bound him to maliki. Can wiki have hidden a dangerous heretical texts that remedial had entrusted to him. Then finances would have read and annotated some mysterious instructions concerning a community of roughened basemen in revolt against everything and everybody. But. But.

But two facts work against this hypothesis of mine. The first is that financial didn’t seem interested in such questions he was a translator of Greek texts and a preacher of heresies. The other is that sentences like the ones about the figs and the stone and the cicadas

Would not be explained by this first hypothesis. Perhaps they are riddles with another meaning i ventured. Or do you have another hypothesis. I have but it is still vague. It seemed to me as i read this page. That i had read some of these words before

And some phrases that are almost the same which I’ve seen elsewhere returned to my mind. It seems to me indeed that this page speaks of something there has been talk about during these past days but i cannot recall what i must think it over. Perhaps I’ll have to read other books.

Why to know what one book says you must read others. At times this can be so. Often books speak of other books often a harmless book is like a seed that will blossom into a dangerous book. Or it is the other way around. It is the sweet fruit of a bitter stem.

In reading Albert couldn’t i learn what Thomas might have said or in reading Thomas know whatever ruiz said. True i said amazed. Until then i had thought each book spoke of the things human or divine that lie outside books. Now i realized that not infrequently books speak of books.

It is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long centuries old murmuring and intercept herbal dialogue between one parchment under a living thing

A receptacle of power is not to be ruled by a human mind. A treasure of secrets emanated by many minds. Surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors. But then i said what is the use of hiding books

It from the books not hidden you can arrive at the concealed ones. Over the centuries it is no use at all. In a space of years or days it has some use. You see in fact how bewildered we are. And is a library than an instrument not for

Distributing the truth but for delaying it’s appearance. I asked dumbfounded. Not always and not necessarily. In this case it is. Sexed in which also goes hunting for truffles and sees the minor rights arriving they confer at length with William and do bettino and very sad things are learned about John the twenty second.

After these considerations my master decided to proceed no further. I have already said that he occasionally had moments of total inactivity as if the ceaseless cycle of the stars had stopped and he with it and with them. And so it was that morning. He stretched out on his palate stairs

I returned to the courtyard and saw that the sun had grown weak her. Beautiful unclear as it had been the morning as the day approached the completion of it’s first half was becoming damp and misty. Heavy clouds moved from the north and were invading the top of the mountain

Covering it with a light broom. It seemed to be fog and perhaps fog was also rising from the ground but at that altitude it was difficult to distinguish the mists that Rose from below and those that came down from above. It was becoming hard to discern the bulk of the more distant buildings.

I saw severin as gaily assembling the swine herds and some of their animals. He told me he was going to descend along the mountain slopes and into the valley to hunt for truffles. I wasn’t familiar with that choice fruit of the underbrush which was found in the peninsula and seemed typical

Especially of the benedictine domains whether it nurture the black ones. Or in these lands the white and more aromatic. Separateness explained to me what a truffle was and how tasty when prepared in the most diverse ways. And he told me was very difficult to find because it

Was hidden underground more secret than a mushroom and the only animals capable of unearthing it were pigs following their smell. But on finding that they wanted to devour themselves and they had to be chased off at once so that you could step in and dig up the truffle.

I learned later that may lords did not disdain to join this hunt. For blowing the pigs as if they were noblest hounds and followed in turn by servants with hose. I remember indeed that in later years a lord of my country knowing i was acquainted with Italy

Asked me why as he had seen down there some lords went out to pasture their pigs and i laughed realizing that on the contrary they were going in search of truffles. But when i told him that these lords hoped to find the truffle underground to eat it.

He thought i said they were seeking the teufel the devil and he blessed himself devoutly looking at me in amazement. Then the misunderstanding was cleared up and we both laughed at it. Such is the magic of human languages that by human accord often the same sounds mean different things.

My curiosity aroused by several rinus preparations i decided to follow him. Also because i realized he was turning to this hunt in order to forget the sad events the depressed everyone. And i thought that in helping him to forget his thoughts. I would perhaps if not forget at least restrain my own.

Nor will i deny since i have ditto almond to ride always and only the truth. That i was secretly lured by the idea that. Down in the valley i might perhaps glimpse some one i will not mention. But to myself and almost allowed i declared that

Since the two locations were expected to arrive that day i might perhaps syp one of them. As we gradually descended the curves of the mountain the air became clearer. Not that the sun returned for the upper part of the sky was heavy with clouds

But things stood out sharply even as the fog remained above our heads. Indeed when we had gone some distance i turned to look up at the top of the mountain and could no longer see anything. From the halfway point upward the summit the high plane the deficient. Everything had disappeared among the clouds.

The morning of our arrival when we were already among the mountains at certain bends it was still possible to view the sea no more than ten miles away perhaps even less. Our journey had been rich in surprises because suddenly we would find ourselves on a kind of terrace in the mountain.

Which fell sharply down to beautiful bays and then a little later we would enter deep chasms where mountains Rose among mountains and one blocked from another the sight of the distant shore while the sun could hardly force it’s way into the deep valleys.

Never before had i seen as i saw in that part of Italy such narrow and sudden jottings of sea and mountains. Of shores followed by alpine landscapes and in the wind that whistled among the gorges you could catch the alternate conflict of the marine bombs with icy mountain gusts.

That morning however all was grey almost milky white and there were no horizons even when the gorges opened out towards the distant shores. But i am dwelling on recollections of little interest as far as our story goes my patient reader. So i will not narrate the ups and downs of our search for

The teufel and i will tell rather of the legation of friars minor which i was the first to cite. I ran at once to the monastery to inform William. My master waited till the newcomers had entered and been greeted by the Abbot according to the ritual. Then he went to meet the group

And there was a series of fraternal embraces and salutations. The meal hour had already passed but a table had been set for the guests and the Abbot thoughtfully left us among them. Alone with William exempted from the obligations of the rule.

They were free to eat and at the same time exchange their impressions. After all it was god forgive me the unpleasant simile. Like a council of war to be held as quickly as possible before the enemy host namely the Avenue obligation could arrive. Needless to say the newcomers also promptly

Metal bettino whom are greeted with surprise. Joy veneration inspired not only by his long absence and by the fears surrounding his disappearance but also by the qualities of that courageous warrior who for decades had fought their same battle. Of the friars that made up the group i will speak

Later when i tell about the next day’s meeting. For that matter i talk very little with them at first involved as i was in the three man conference promptly established between William who tino and Michael of cesena. Michael must have been a truly strange man most ardent in his franciscan passion

He had at times the gestures the accents of uber tino in his moments of mystical transport. Very human and jovial in his earthly nature a man of the Romania. Capable of appreciating a good table and happy to be among his friends.

Subtle and evasive he could abruptly become sly and clever as a fox elusive as a mole when problems of relations among the mighty were touched upon. Capable of great outbursts of laughter fervent tensions eloquent silences deft in turning his gaze away from his interlocutor if the latter’s question required him to conceal

With what seemed abs st mindedness his refusal to reply. I have already spoken a bit about him in the preceding pages and those were things i had heard said perhaps by persons to whom they had been said. Now on the other hand i understood better many of his contradictory attitudes

And the sudden changes of political strategy that in recent years had amazed his own friends and followers. Minister general of the order of the friars minor he was in principle the heir of st Francis and actually the heir of his interpreters. He had to compete with the sanctity and wisdom of such

A predecessor as bonaventure have been your radio. He had to assure respect for the rule and at the same time the fortunes of the order so powerful and fast. He had to keep an eye on the courts and on the city magistrates from whom the order though in the guise of arms

Received gifts and bequests source of prosperity and wealth. And at the same time he had to make sure that the requirement of penance did not lead the more ardent spirituals to abandon the order scattering that splendid community of which he was the head in a constellation of bands of heretics.

He had to please the pope the emperor the friars of the poor life and st Francis who was certainly watching over him from heaven as well as the Christian people who were watching him from the earth. When John had condemned all spirituals as heretics Michael had not hesitated to hand

Over to him five of the most unruly friars of provence. Allowing the pontiff to burn them at the stake. But realizing and do bettino may have had some share in this that many in the order sympathised with the followers of Evangelical simplicity.

Michael had then acted in such a way that the chapter of. Four years later took up the demands of the burnt men naturally trying to reconcile a need which could be heretical with the ways and institutions of the order and trying to harmonize the desires of the order and those of the pope.

But as Michael was busy convincing the pope without whose consent he would have been unable to proceed he had been willing also to accept the favors of the emperor and the imperial theologians. Two years before the day i saw him he had yet and joined his monks in the chapter general of Leon

To speak of the pope’s person only with moderation and respect. And this was Joe a few months after the pope referring to the minor rites had complained of their yelping their errors their insanities. But here he was at table friendly with persons who spoke of the pope with less than no respect.

I have already told the rest of the story. John wanted him at avignon he himself wanted and did not want to go and the next day’s meeting was to decide on the form and guarantees of a journey that should not appear as an act of submission or as an act of defiance.

I don’t believe Michael had ever met John personally at least not as pope. In any event he hadn’t seen him for a long time and Michael’s friends hastened to paint the portrait of that ceremony act in the darkest hues. One thing you must learn William said to him.

Is never to trust his oaths which he always maintains to the letter violating their substance. Everyone knows who bettino said what happened at the time of his election. I wouldn’t call it an election but an imposition one man at the table cried. A man i later heard them call huh of new castle.

Whose accent was similar to my masters. For that matter the depth of climate the fifth itself was never very clear. The king had never forgiven him for having PR Thomas to try boniface the eighth posthumously and then doing everything he could to avoid repudiating his predecessor.

Nobody really knows how clement died at cop entre. The fact is when the cardinals met in carp on trial for the conclave. The new pope didn’t materialize because quite rightly the argument shifted to the choice between avignon and Rome. I dunno exactly what happened at that time it was a massacre i’m told.

With the cardinals threatened by the nephew of the dead pope their serve once slaughtered the palace set a fire the cardinals appealing to the king who says he never wanted the pope to desert Rome and they should be patient and make a good choice.

Then Philip the fair died again god only knows how. Or the devil knows who bettino said blessing himself in which he was imitated by all the others. Or the devil knows you agreed with a sneer. Any way another king succeeds survives eighteen months and dies.

His newborn heir also dies in a few days’ time and the regent the king’s brother assumes the throne. And this is Phillip the fifth the very one who when he was still account of what yea stopped the cardinals who were fleeing from cop on trump. Michael said. Yes he went on.

He puts them again into conclave in Leo in the Dominican convent swearing he will defend their safety and not keep them prisoner. But once they place themselves in his power he does not just have them locked up which is the custom after all

But every day reduces their food until they come to a decision. And each one promises to support his claim to the throne. When he does assume the throne the cardinals are so weary of being prisoners after two years and so afraid of staying there for the rest of their lives eating badly

That they agree to everything the gluttons and on the throne of Peter they put that gnome who is now over seventy. Gnome yes true. Uber tino said laughing and rather consumptive looking but stronger and shrewder than anyone thought. Son of a cobbler one of the legged scrolled.

Christ was the son of a carpenter who bettino reproached him. That is not the point. He is a cultivated man he studied law at mumper yea and medicine in Paris he cultivated his friendships in the ways best suited to win the episcopal seats in

The cardinal’s hat when it seemed opportune to him and. And as counselor of Robert the wise in Naples he amazed many with his acumen. When bishop of avignon he gave all the right advice. Right that is for the outcome of that squalid adventure to Philip the fair about how to ruin the templars.

And after his election he managed to foil a plot of cardinals who wanted to kill him. But this is not what i meant to talk about. I was speaking of his ability to betray vows without being accused of swearing falsely.

To be elected he promised cardinal orsini he would return the people seat to Rome and when he was elected he swore on the consecrated host that if he were not to keep his promised he would never mount a horse or a mule again. Will you know what that fox did.

After he had himself crowned in Leo against the will of the king who wanted the ceremony to take place in avignon. He traveled from the ought to avignon by boat. The monks all laughed the pope was a perjurer but there was no denying he had a certain ingenious nus.

He is without shame William remarked. Didn’t you say that John made no attempt to conceal his bad face. Haven’t you bettino told me about what he said to orsini on the day of his arrival in Avenue. To be sure uber Tina said.

He said to him that the sky of France was so beautiful he could not see why he should set foot in a city full of ruins like Rome. And inasmuch as the pope like Peter had the power to bind and to loosen he was now exercising this power

And he decided to remain where he was where he enjoyed being. And when orsini tried to remind him that it was his duty to live on the Vatican hill. He recalled him sharply to obedience and broke off the discussion. But i have not finished the story of the oath.

And disembarking from the boat John was to have mounted a white horse to be followed by the cardinals on black horses according to tradition. Instead he went to the episcopal palace on foot. Nor have i ever heard of his riding a horse again.

And this is the man Michael you expect to abide by the guarantees he will give you. Michael remained silent for a long time then he said. I can understand the pope’s wish to remain in avignon i will not dispute it but he cannot dispute our desire for poverty

And our interpretation of the example of Christ. Don’t be ingenuous Michael Williams spoke up. Your wishes hours make his appear sinister. You must realize that for centuries a greedy man has never ascended the papal throne. The whore of Babylon against tomorrow bettino used to fulminate.

The corrupt popes described by the poets of your country like that Gary were meek lamb tjs and sober compared to John. He is a thieving magpie a Jewish usury. In avignon there is more trafficking than in Florence. I have learned of the ignoble transaction with clemens nephew. Bertrand of goth

He of the slaughter of cop on trial. During which incidentally the cardinals were relieved of all their jewels. He had laid his hands on his unc cause treasure which was no trifle and John had not overlooked anything bertrand had stolen. In the convener Abi lace journalists precisely the coins the golden silver vessels

The books rugs precious stones ornaments. John however pretended not to know that bertrand had seized more than a million and a half gold florins during the sack of cop on trial. He questioned another thirty thousand florins bertrand confessed he had received from his uncle for a pious cause namely a crusade.

It was agreed that bertrand would keep half the sum for the crusade and donate the other half to the papal throne. Then bertrand never made the crusader at least he has not made it yet and the pope has not seen a florin. He is not so clever then Michael remarked.

That was the only time he has been outwitted in a matter of money uber tino said. You must know well the kind of tradesmen who will be dealing with. In every other situation he has displayed a diabolical skill in collecting money. He has a midas everything he touches becomes

Gold and flows into the coffers of avignon. Whenever i entered his apartments i found bankers money changes and tables laden with gold. Clerics counting Florence and filing them neatly one on top of another. And you will see the Alice he has had built for himself with riches that were once

Attributed only to the emperor of Byzantium or the great Khan of the tartars. And now you understand why he issued all those bulls against the ideal of poverty. But do you know that he has driven the Dominicans in their hatred of our order to carve statues of Christ with a royal crown a

Tunic of purple and gold and sumptuous sandals. In avignon they display crucifixes where Christ is nailed by a single hand while the other touches a purse hanging from his belt to indicate that he authorizes the use of money for religious ends. Oh how shameless Michael cried but this is outright blasphemy.

He has added William went on a third ground to the papal tiara hasn’t he uber Tina. Certainly. At the beginning of the millennium pope held a branded assumed one with the legend corona rigney the man day. The infamous boniface later added a second writing on it. The Adama imperial de manu patri.

And John has simply perfected the symbol. Three crowns the spiritual power the temporal and the ecclesiastical. A symbol worthy of the persian kings. A pagan symbol. There was one monk who until then had remained silent busily and devoutly consuming the good dishes the Abbot had sent to the table.

With an absent die he followed the various discussions. Emitting every now and then a sarcastic laugh at the pope’s expense or a grunt of approval at the other monks indignant exclamations. But otherwise he was intent on wiping from his gin the juices and bits of meat that

Had escaped his toothless but voracious mouth. And the only times he had spoken a word to one of his neighbors were to praise some delicacy. I learned later that he was master Jerome that bishop of capa whom a few days before uber tino had thought dead.

I must add that the news of his death two years earlier continued to circulate as the true throughout christendom for a long time. Because i also heard it afterward. Actually he died a few months after that meeting of ours and i still think he died of the great al.

Killed him at the next day’s meeting. I would almost believe he exploded at once so fragile was he a body and so billions of humor. At this point he intervened in the discussion speaking with his mouthful. And then. You know the villain issued a constitution concerning the tax eyes that cry penitentiary i

In which he exploits the sins of religious. In order to squeeze out more money. If an ecclesiastic commits a cardinal sin with a nun with a relative iv or even with an ordinary woman because this also happens. He can be absorbed only by paying sixty seven gold pieces and twelve punts.

And if he commits bestiality it has more than two hundred pieces but if he has committed it only with user animals and not with females the fine is reduced by one hundred. And a nun who has given herself too many men i they’re all

At once or at different times inside the convent or out. If she then wants to become abbess must pay one hundred and thirty one gold pieces and fifteen pence. Come come master Jerome. Who bettino protested you know how little i love the pope but on this point i must defend him.

It is a slander circulated in avignon i have never seen this constitution. It exists Jerome declared vigorously. I have not seen it either but it exists. Uber tino shook his head and the others fell silent. I realized they were accustomed to not paying great heed to master Jerome

Whom William had called a fool the other day. William tried to resume the conversation. In any case true or false as it may be this rumor tells us the moral climate of having your were all exploited and exploiters know they are living more in a market than at the court of Christ’s vicar.

When John ascended the throne there was talk of a treasure of seventy thousand florins and now there are those who say he has amassed more than ten million. It is true who better leno said. Michael Michael you have no idea of the shameful things i had to see and avignon.

Let us try to be honest Michael said. We know that our own people have also committed excesses. I have been told of franciscans who made armed attacks on Dominican convents and despoiled their rival monks to impose poverty on them.

This is why i dared not oppose John at the time of the events in provence. I want to come to an a agreement with him. I will not humiliate his pride i will only ask him not to humiliate our humility. I will not seek to him of money.

I will ask him only to agree to a sound interpretation of scripture and this is what we must do with his envoys tomorrow. After all they are men of theology and not all will be greedy like John. When some wise men have determined an interpretation of scripture he will not be able to.

He. Who bettino interrupted him. Why you do not yet know his follies in the field of theology. He really wants to bind everything with his own hand and on earth and in heaven. On earth we have seen what he does. As for heaven.

Well he has not yet expressed the ideas i cannot divulge to you. Not publicly at least but i know for certain that he has whispered them to his henchmen. He is planning some mad if not perverse propositions that would change the very substance of doctrine

And would do prive all our preaching of power. What are they many asked. Asked baron gar he knows he told me of them. Uber tino had turned to baron got a loanee who over the past years had been one of the most determined adversaries of the pope at his own court.

Having come from avignon he had joined the group of the other franciscans two days earlier and had arrived at the Abbey with them. It is a murky and almost incredible story baron gar said. It seems John is planning to declare that the just will not enjoy the beatific vision until after judgment.

For some time he has been reflecting on the ninth verse of the sixth chapter of the apocalypse where the opening of the fifth seal is discussed were under the altar appear those who were slain for testing filing to the word of god and to ask for justice.

To each is given a white robe and they are told to be patient a little longer. Assign John argues that they will not be able to see god in his essence until the last judgment is fulfilled. To whom has he said these things. My glass terrified.

So far only to a few intimates but word has spread. They say he is preparing an open declaration not immediately perhaps in a few years. He is consulting his theologians. Though. Jerome sneered as he ate. And more it seems that he wants to go further. And assert that

Nor will hell be open before that day not even for the devils. Or Jesus assist us Jerome cried and what will we tell sinners then if we cannot threaten them with an immediate hell the moment they are dead. We are in the hands of a madman who bettino said.

But i do not understand why he wants to assert these things. The whole doctrine of indulgences goes up in smoke Jerome complained and not even he will be able to sell any after that. Why should a priest who has committed the sin of bestiality pay so many gold pieces

To avoid such a remote punishment. Not so remote will bettino said firmly the hour is at hand. You know that your brother but the symbol do not know it this is how things stand. Cried Jerome who no longer seemed to be enjoying his food. What an evil idea

Those preaching friars must have put it into his mind. Ah. And he shook his head. But why. Michael of cheese ina returned to this question. I don’t believe there’s a reason William said. It’s a test he allows himself an act of pride.

He wants to be truly the one who decides for heaven and earth. I knew of these whisperings William of ockham had written me. We shall see in the end whether the pope has his way or the theologians have there’s. The voice of the whole church

The very wishes of the people of god god the bishops. Oho. On doctrinal matters he can bend even the theologians to his will Michael said sadly. Not necessarily William replied. We live in times when those learned in divine things have no fear of proclaiming the pope a heretic.

Those learned in divine things are in their way the voice of the Christian people. And not even the pope can set himself against them now. Worse still worse. Michael murmured frightened. Of on one side a mad pope

On the other the people of god who even if through the words of his theologians will soon claim to interpret scripture freely. Why was what your people in perugia did any different William asked. Michael reacted as if stung.

That is why i want to meet the pope we can do nothing if he is not in agreement. We shall see we shall see William said. In an enigmatic tone. My master was truly very sharp. How could he foresee that Michael himself would later decide to support the theologians of the empire

And to support the people in condemning the pope. How could William foresee that in four years’ time when John was first to pronounce his incredible doctrine. There would be an uprising on the part of all christianity. If the beatific vision was thus postponed. How could the dead intercede for the living.

And what would become of the cult of the saints. It was the minor rights themselves who would open hostilities in condemning the pope and William of ockham would be in the front rank stern and implacable in his arguments. The conflict was to last for three years until John closed death made partial amends.

I heard him described years later as he appeared in the consistory of December thirteen thirty four. Smaller than he had seemed previously withered by age eighty five years old and dying. His face pale and he was to say. The fox so clever and playing on words not only to break

His own oaths but also to deny his own stubbornness. We confess and believe that the souls separated from the body and completely purified are in heaven in paradise with the angels and with Jesus Christ and that they see god in his divine essence clearly face to face. And then after a pause.

It was never known whether this was due to his difficulty in breathing or to his perverse desire to underline the last clause as adversities. To the extent to which the state and condition of the separated soul allows it. The next morning

A Sunday he had himself laid on a long chair with reclining back and he received the cardinals who kissed his hand and he died. But again i digress and tell things other than those i should tell. Yet after all the rest of their conversation at table does not add much to the

Understanding of the events i am narrating. The minor rights agreed on the stand to be taken the next day. They sized up their adversaries one by one. They committed with concern on the news announced by William of the arrival of Bernard yee. And even more on the fact that cardinal bertrand del progetto

Would be presiding over the Avenue obligation. To inquisitors were too many. Assign a plan to use the argument of heresy against the minor rights. So much the worse William said we will treat them as heretics. No no Michael said let us proceed cautiously we must not jeopardize any possible agreement.

As far as i can see William said though i also worked for the realization of this meeting and you know it Michael. I do not believe the Avenue knees are coming here to achieve any positive result. John once you would have been your alone and without guarantees.

But the meeting will have at least one function to make you understand that. It would have been worse if you had gone there before having had this experience. And so you have worked hard and for many months to bring about something you believe futile. Michael said bitterly.

I was asked to by the emperor and by you William said. And ultimately it is never a futile thing to know one’s enemies better. At this point they came to tell us that the second delegation was coming inside the walls. The minor rights Rose and went out to meet the pope’s men. Knowns.

In which cardinal del progetto arrives with Bernard g and the other men of avignon and then each one does something different. Men who had already known one another for some time men who without knowing one another had each heard the others spoken of. Exchanged greetings in the courtyard with apparent meekness.

At the abbott’s side cardinal bertrand del progetto moved like a man accustomed to power. As if he were virtually a second pope himself. And to one and all espouse Ashley to the minor writes he distributed cordial smiles. Auguring splendid agreement for the next day’s meeting and bearing explicit wishes for peace and good.

Used deliberately this expression dear to the franciscans. From John the twenty second. Excellent he said to me when William was kind enough to introduce me as his scribe and pupil. Then he asked me whether i knew Bologna and he praised it’s beauty to me it’s good food and it’s splendid university

Inviting me to visit the city rather than return one day as he said among those German people of mine who were making our lord pope suffer so much. Then he extended his ring for me to kiss as he directed his smile at someone else. For that matter my attention immediately turned to

The person of whom i had heard most talk recently. Bernard gears the French called him or Bernardo gui done or Bernardo guido as he was called elsewhere. He was a Dominican of about seventy slender and erect. I was struck by his grey eyes capable of staring without any expression.

I was to see them often flash with ambiguous light. Shrewd both in concealing thoughts and passions and in deliberately conveying them. In the general exchange of greetings he was not affectionate or cordial like the others but always and just barely polite.

When he saw uber tino whom he already knew he was very deferential but stared at him in a way that gave me an uneasy shudder. When he greeted Michael of cesena his smile was hard to decipher and he murmured without warmth. You have been awaited there for some time.

A sentence in which i was unable to catch either a hint of eagerness or a shadow of irony. I either an injunction or for that matter a suggestion of interest. He met William and when he learned who he was he looked at him with polite hostility.

Not because his face betrayed his secret feelings i was sure of that. Even while i was unsure that he harbored any feelings at all. But because he certainly wanted William to feel he was hostile. William returned his hostility smiling at him with exaggerated cordiality Ian saying.

For some time i have been wanting to meet a man whose fame has been a lesson to me and an admonition for many important decisions that have inspired my life. Certain words of praise almost a flattery for anyone who did not know as Bernard did know well

That one of the most important decisions in Williams’ life had been to abandon the position of inquisitor. I derived the impression that if William would gladly have seen Bernard in some imperial dungeon Bernard certainly would have been pleased to see Williams suddenly seized by accidental intermediate death.

And since Bernard in those days had men at arms under his command i feared for my good master’s life. Bernard must already have been informed by the Abbot of the crimes committed in the Abbey. In fact pretending to ignore the venom in Williams’ words he said to him. It seems that now

The abbott’s request and in order to fulfill the mission entrusted to me under the terms of the agreement that has united us all here. I must concern myself with some very sad events. In which the piss difference stink of the devil is evident. I mentioned this to you because i know that in

Remote times when he would have been closer to me you fought as i did and those like me in that field where the forces of good are arrayed against the forces of evil. True William said calmly but then i went over to the other side. Bernard took the blow well.

Can you tell me anything helpful about these criminal deeds. No unfortunately William answered with civility. I do not have your experience of criminal deeds. From that moment on i lost track of everyone. William after another conversation with Michael into bettino withdrew to the scriptorium.

He asked maliki’s leave to examine certain books but i was unable to hear the titles. Maliki looked at him oddly but could not deny permission. Strangely they did not have to be sought in a library. They were already on finances his desk all of them.

By master immersed himself in his reading and i decided not to disturb him. I went down into the kitchen. There i saw Bernard gear. He probably wanted to comprehend the layout of the Abbey and was roaming about everywhere. I heard him interrogating the cooks and other servants

Speaking the local vernacular after a fashion. I recalled that he had been an inquisitor in northern Italy. He seemed to be asking for information about the harvest the organization of work in the monastery. But even while asking the most innocuous questions he would look at his companion

With penetrating eyes then would abruptly ask another question and at this point his victim would blanch and stammer. I concluded that in some singular way he was carrying out an inquisition and was exploiting a formidable weapon that every inquisitor in the performance of his function possesses and employs. The fear of others.

For every person when questioned usually tells the inquisitor. Out of fear of being suspected of something. Whatever may serve to make somebody else suspect. For all the rest of the afternoon as i gradually moved about i saw a Bernard proceed in this fashion whether by the mills or in the cloister

But he almost never confronted monks always lay brothers or peasants. The opposite of Williams’ strategy thus far. Vespers. In which are Leonardo’s seems to give valuable information and William reveals his method of arriving at a probable truth. Through a series of unquestionable errors. Later William descended from the scriptorium in good humor.

While we were waiting for supper time we came upon Allah nardo in the cloister. Remembering his request i had procured some chickpeas the day before in the kitchen and i offered them to him. He thanked me stuffing them into his toothless drooling mouth. You see boy he said.

They have the corpse also lay where the book announced it would be. Oh wait for the fourth trumpet. I asked him why he thought the key to the sequence of crimes lay in the book of revelation. He looked at me amazed. The book of John offers the key to everything.

And he added with a grimace of bitterness. I knew it i’d been saying as much for a long time. I was the one you note to suggest to the Abbot. The one we had then to collect as many commentaries on the apocalypse as possible. I was to become librarian.

But then the other one managed to have himself sent to see loss. Where he found the finest manuscripts and he came back with splendid Booty. Oh he knew where to look. He also spoke the language of the infidels. And so the library was given into his keeping and not mine.

But god punished him and sent him into the realm of darkness before his time. He laughed in a nasty way. That old man who until then lost in the Serenity of his old age had seemed to me like an innocent child. Who was the monkey was speaking of William asked.

He looked at us stunned. Who was i speaking of. I cannot remember. It was such a long time ago. But god punishes god nullifies god dims even memories. Many acts of pride were committed in the library. Especially after it fell into the hands of foreigners. God punishes still il.

We could get no more out of him and we left him to his calm a bitter delirium. William declared himself very interested in that exchange. Ala nardo is Amanda listened to each time he speaks he says something interesting. What did he say this time. And so William said.

Solving the mystery is not the same as deducing from first principles. Nor does it amount simply to collecting a number of particular data from which to infer a general law. It means rather. Facing one or two or three particular data apparently with nothing in common

And trying to imagine why whether they could represent so many instances of a general law you don’t yet know and which perhaps has never been pronounced. To be sure if you know as the philosopher says that man the horse and the mule are

All without bile and are all long lived you can venture the principle that animals without bio live a long time. But take the case of animals with horns. Why do they have horns. Suddenly you realize that all animals with horns or without teeth in the upper jaw. This would be a fine discovery

If you did not also realize that alas there are animals without teeth in the upper jaw who however do not have horns. The camel to name one. And finally you realize. That all animals without teeth in the upper jaw have four stomachs. While then. You can suppose that one who cannot chew well

Must need four stomachs to digest food better but what about the horns. You then try to imagine a material cause for horns. Say the lack of teeth provides the animal with an excess of osseous mass that must emerge somewhere else. But is that sufficient explanation. No. Because the camel has no upper teeth

Has four stomachs but does not have horns. And you must also imagine a final clause. The osseous matter emerges in orange only in animals without other means of defense. But the camel has a very tough hide and doesn’t need horns. So the law could be. But what have horns to do with anything

I asked impatiently. And why are you concerned with animals having horns. I have never concerned myself with them but the bishop of Lincoln was greatly interested in them pursuing an idea of Aristotle. Honestly i don’t know whether his conclusions are the right ones nor have i ever

Checked to see where the camel’s teeth are or how many stomachs he has. Trying to tell you that the search for explicate of laws and natural facts proceeds in a tortuous fashion. In the face of some inexplicable facts. You must try to imagine many general laws whose connection with your facts escapes you.

Then suddenly in the unexpected connection of a result. A specific situation and one of those laws. You perceive a line of reasoning that seems more convincing than the others. You try applying it to all similar cases to use it for making predictions and you discover that your intuition was right.

But until you reach the end you will never know which product to introduce into your reasoning and which to omit. And this is what i am doing now. I line up so many disjointed elements and i venture some hypotheses. I have to venture many

And many of them are so absurd that i would be ashamed to tell them to you. You see in the case of the horse brunel us when i saw the clues i guessed many complementary and contradictory hypotheses. It could be a runaway horse it could be that the

Abbot had written down the slope on that fine horse. It could be that one horse prunella had left the tracks in the snow and another horse for vellus the day before the traces of Maine in the bush and the brow Sanchez could have been broken by some men.

I didn’t know which hypothesis was right until i saw the seller and the servants anxiously searching. Then i understood that the brunello hypothesis was the only right one and i tried to prove a true addressing the monks as i did. I won but i might also have lost.

The others believed me wise because i won but they didn’t know the many instances in which i have been foolish because i lost. And they didn’t know that a few seconds before winning i wasn’t sure i wouldn’t lose. Now. For the events of the Abbey i have many fine hypotheses

But there is no evident fact that allows me to say which is best. So rather than appear foolish afterward. I renounce seeming clever now. Let me think no more until tomorrow at least. I understood at that moment my master’s method of reasoning

And it seemed to me quite alien that of the philosopher who reasons by first principles so that his intellect almost assumes the ways of the divine intellect. I understood that when he didn’t have an answer William proposed many to himself. Very different one from another. I remained puzzled. But then

I ventured to remark. You are still far from the solution. I am very close to one William said but i don’t know which. Therefore you don’t have a single answer to your questions. And so if i did i would teach theology in Paris. In Paris do they always have the true answer.

Never William said but they are very sure of their errors. And you i said with childish impertinence never commit errors. Often he answered but instead of conceiving only one i imagine many so i become the slave of none.

I had the impression that William was not at all interested in the truth which is nothing but the adjustment between the thing and the intellect. On the contrary he amused himself by imagining how many possibilities were possible. At that moment i confess i despaired of my master and caught myself thinking.

Good thing the inquisitor has come. I was on the side of that thirst for truth that inspired Bernard geen. And in this culpable mood more torn than Judas on the night of holy Thursday. I went with William into the refectory to eat my supper. Compline. In which Salvatore tells of a prodigious spell.

The supper for the legation was superb. The Abbot must have known well both human weaknesses and the customs of the papal court which i must say did not displease brother Michael’s minor ict either. The freshly slaughtered pigs were to have produced blood pudding according to the

Monte casino recipe the cook had told us. But finances wretched ended oblige then to throw away all the pig’s blood. Though they should eventually slaughter some more pigs. I believe that in those days everyone abhorred the idea of killing the lord’s creatures. Nevertheless we had a regulus pigeon.

Marinated in the wine of those lands and roast rabbit. St Clair’s pasties. Rice with the almonds of those hills. The blancmange of fast days that is and borage tarts stuffed olives fried cheese mutton with a source of raw peppers. White broad beans and exquisite suites. St Bernard’s cake st Nicholas’s pies

St Lucy’s dumplings and wines and herb liqueurs that put everyone in a good humor even Bernard geek usual Lee so austere. An elixir of lemon verbena walnut wine wine against the gout and gentian wine. It seemed an assembly of gluttons except that every sip or every morsel was accompanied by devotional readings.

In the end all Rose very happy some mentioning vague elements as an excuse not to go down to compline. But the Abbot did not take offense. I saw Salvatore slip off toward the garden with a bundle under his arm. My curiosity still further aroused. I followed and called him.

He tried to evade me but when i questioned him he replied that in the bundle. Which moved as if inhabited by something alive. He was carrying a basle lisk. Cafe but at least cume. The wrecks of Sara panty. Dont plano a poison that it all shines door. K dcom you have Elena

Even the stink comes door and kills you. Poisons you and it has black spots on his back and a head like a cook. And half goes erect over the Tara and half on the terra like the others serpents and kills the beluga. The beluga. Ok.

Parviz more Manama just a bit blue long then the rat and also called the muskrat and saw the south bay and the boater. And when they bite it the balloon runs to the vernacular. Or to the teacher beat beta and choose it and comes back to the battalion

And they say it generates through the ugly. But most say they are wrong. I asked him what he was doing with the Basilisk and he said that was his business. Now completely overwhelmed by curiosity. I said that these days with all the deaths

There could be no more secret matters and i would tell William. Then Salvatore ardently begged me to remain silent. Opened the bundle and showed me a black cat. He drew me closer and with an obscene smile said that he didn’t want the celery who was powerful or me

Young and handsome to enjoy the love of the village girls any more when he couldn’t because he was ugly and the poor wretch. But he knew a prodigious spell that would make every woman succumb to love. You had to kill a black cat and dig out it’s eyes.

Then put i’m in two eggs of a black hen one eye and one egg one eye and the other. And he showed me two eggs that he swore he had taken from appropriate hands. Then you had to let the eggs rot in a pile of horse dung

And he had one ready in a corner of the vegetable garden where nobody ever went. There little devil would be born from each egg and would then be at your serve i was procuring for you all the delights of this world. But alas he told me for the magic spell to work

The woman whose love he wanted had to spit on the eggs before they were buried in the dun and that problem tormented him. Because he would have to have the woman in question at hand that night and make her perform the ritual without knowing it’s purpose.

A sudden heat seized me in the face or the viscera. Or in my whole body and i asked in a faint voice whether that night he would bring the same girl within the walls. He laughed mockingly and said i was truly gripped by a great lust.

I said not that i was asking out of pure curiosity. And then he said there were plenty of women in the village and he would bring up another even more beautiful than the one i liked. I supposed he was lying to make me go away. And in any case

What could i have done follow him all night when William was awaiting me for quite different enterprises. And again see her if it was she. Toward whom my appetites drove me while my reason drove me away wei. And whom i should never see again even though i did desire to see her further.

Surely not. So i persuaded myself that Salvatore was telling the truth as far as the woman was concerned. Or perhaps he was lying about everything and the spell he described was a fantasy of his naive superstitious mind and he would not do anything.

I became irritated with him treated him roughly told him that for that night he would do better to go to bed because archers were patrolling the Abbey. He answered that he knew the Abbey better than the archers did and with this fog nobody would see anybody. Indeed he said to me.

I’m going to run off now and you won’t see me anymore even if i were two feet away having my pleasure with the girl you desire. He expressed himself with different words but this was the meaning of what he said. I left indignant because it was unworthy of me

Nobleman and novice to dispute with such rabble. I joined William and we did what was to be done. That is we prepared to follow compline at the rear of the nave. So that when the office ended we would be ready to undertake our second. For me third journey

Into the bowels of the labyrinth. After compline. In which they visit the labyrinth again reached the threshold of the Phineas Africa but cannot enter because they do not know what the first and seventh of the four are and finally and so has a recurrence

There were very area died one of his love melody. The visit to the library cost us long hours of work. Described in words the verification we aim to carry out was simple. But our progress by lamplight as we read the legends. Mark the passages and the blank walls on the map.

Recorded the initials followed the various routes that the play of openings and obstacle allowed us was very long. And tedious. It was bitter cold. The night was not windy and we did not hear those faint whistling that had upset us the first evening. But a damp icy air entered from the arrow slits.

We had put on woolen gloves so as to be able to touch the volumes without having our hands become numb. But they were the kind used for writing in winter the fingertips and sometimes we had to hold our hands to the flame or put them against our chests

Or clap them as we hopped about half frozen. For this reason we didn’t perform the whole task consecutively. We stopped to browse in the cases and now that William with his new glasses on his nose could linger and read the books that every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness.

Either because he knew the work or because he had been seeking it for a long time or finally because he had never heard it meant and was highly excited and titillated. In short for him every book was like a fabulous animal that he was meeting in a strange land.

And as he leapt through one manuscript he ordered me to look for others. See what’s in that case. And i deciphering and shifting volumes said historia and gloor m of bead and also by bien. De ita for catriona temperley. The tabernacle low

The temporary boost at computer at chronic or at cheekily the onesie. Autograph via. The rats your name at forum. Vita sancti could tea. Ours may trigger. Naturally the complete works of the venerable and look at these. They rhetorical cabinet sione. The quorum retort quorum distinct feel. And hear many grammarians oppression on hiatus.

The latest. Maximus. Victor rinus. You take his focus asper. Odd i thought at first that here there were authors from anglia. Let’s look below. Is sperry ca. Up what is that. A hibernian poem. Listen. Ocsp woman’s moon doneness or valid bloggers or us

Tourist race and yours is fluke tables could it my genius. Sexier soon doses smaller booths you’d have the only us. In fema been bolsa verde che Misha the glorious. Asprey pharos barigye spool must sue go. Sooner as frequent air quality to her flat brees.

I didn’t understand the meaning but as William read he rolled the words in his mouth so that you seemed to hear the sound of the waves and the sea foam. And this. All down of malmesbury. Listened to this page. Bring me to spawn taught him pro chair on parameter m

P o p t Simon Potter no quay preserve Tim privilege yo. Panegyric on the poem attack quae passim project tories so Paulo from all got us. The words or begin with the same letter. The men of my islands are a bit mad Williams said proudly. Let us look in the other case. Virgil.

What is he doing here. What Virgil the George eggs. Now a pit m i I’ve never heard of it. But it’s Virgil have to lose the rhetorician. Six centuries after the birth of our lord he was considered a great sage. Here it says that the arts are poma. Rhetorical grammar lepore or

The elector geometry her. But what language was he writing. Latin. Or Latin of his own invention however which he considered far more beautiful. Read this he says that astronomy studies the signs of the zodiac which are mon man Dante’s piranha dummies. Her failure. Bell gallic margolis luton miran tam anon and rafa loot.

Was he crazy. I don’t know he didn’t come from my islands. And listen to this he says there are twelve ways of designating fire. Ignis cook we have been. Queer in cocktail co quindi habit Dixie on m. Although. Carla sex coloring. Frog an extra gory flam i. Rozin the robbery. For Martin.

Who strikes the Orlando. Videos queer penny more to a member of will vivica. Sulu Laos. Quo de se leach a ciliate. One day at sea legs non-direct a detour. Nisi ex squaw shinty last elite. And. I knew one day i neha Dale qui in ale habitat see the aqua elementi splatters fair tour.

But there’s no one who speaks like that. Happily. That those were times when to forget an evil world granary and took pleasure in abstruse questions. I was told that in that period for fifteen days and fifty nights the rhetoricians abundance and trenches argued an evocative of aygo

And in the end they attacked each other with weapons. But this to listen. I had grasped the book marvelously illuminated with vegetable labyrinths from which monkeys and serpents peered out. Listen to these words. Countrymen column in. Gone girl i’m in steamy amen plasma ma’am. So narrows. Our barrios. Gowdy flus. Cloud cheakamus.

My islands William said again with tenderness. Don’t be too harsh with those monks afar of hibernia. Perhaps if this Abbey exists and if we still speak of the holy Roman empire we owe it to them. At that time the rest of Europe was reduced to a heap of ruins.

One day they declared invalid or baptisms imparted by certain priests in Gaul because they baptized into dominate factories at Philly i. And not because they practised the new heresy and considered Jesus a woman but because they no longer knew any Latin. Like Salvatore. The more or less.

Vikings from the far north came down along the rivers to sack Rome. The pagan temples were falling in ruins and the Christian ones did not yet exist. It was only the monks of hibernia in their monasteries who wrote and bred read and wrote and illuminated.

Then jumped into little boats made of animal hide and navigated toward these lands and evangelize them as if you people were infidels who understand. You’ve been to Bobby o which was founded by st columba one of them. And so never mind if they invented a new Latin.

Seeing that in Europe no one knew the old Latin anymore. They were great men. St Brendan reached the isles of the blessed and sailed along the coasts of hell where he saw Judas chained to a rock and one day he landed on an island and went ashore there found a sea monster.

Naturally they were all mad. He repeated contentedly. These images are. I can hardly believe my eyes so many colors i said drinking it all in. From a land that doesn’t have any colors a bit of blue and much green. But we mustn’t stand here discussing hibernian monks.

What i want to know is why they are here with the anglians and with grammarians of other countries. Look at your chart where should we be. In the rooms of the west tower. I’ve copied down the scrolls too. So then leaving the blind room we enter the hashtag in a room

And there is only one passage to a single room of the tower. The letter and read his age. Then we go from room to room moving around the tower and we return to the blind room. The sequence of the letters spells. You’re right. He Bernie. He bare Nia

If we come from the blind room back into the hip tag tunnel which like all the others has the letter a for apocalypses. So there are the works of the authors of optima thoroughly and also the grammarians rhetoricians because the men who arranged the library thought that a grammarian

Should remain with the hibernian grammarians even if he came from to lose. It is a criterion you see we are beginning to understand something. But in the rooms of the east tower where we came in we read fons what does that mean. Read your map carefully.

Keep reading the letters of the rooms that follow in order of access. Phones. Either a you. Know phones are die. The eu is the second east blind room i remember it. Perhaps it fits into another sequence. And what did we find in the phones are die that is

In the earthly paradise remember that the room with the altar facing the rising sun is there. There were many bibles there and commentaries on the Bible. Only books of holy scripture. And so you see the word of god corresponding to the earthly paradise. Which as all say is far off to the east.

And here to the west. Ie bernier. So the plan of the library reproduces the map of the world. That’s probable and the books are arranged according to the country of their origin. Or the place where their authors were born or as in this instance the place where they should have been born.

The library installed themselves Virgil the grammarian was born in Toulouse by mistake he should have been born in the western isles and. They corrected the errors of nature. We resumed our way. We passed through a series of rooms rich and splendid apocalypses

And one of these was the room where i had had visions. Indeed we saw the light again from afar. William held his nose and ran to put it out spitting on the ash. To be on the safe side we hurried through the room but i recalled that i had seen there the beautiful

Many colored apocalypse with the mulia mc du soleil and the dragon. We reconstructed the sequence of these rooms starting from the one we entered last last which had why as it’s red initial. Reading backward gave us the word hispania but it’s final a was also the one that included he bernier.

Assign William said that there were some rooms in which works of mixed nature were housed. In any case the area denominated espana seemed to us populated with many courtesies of the apocalypse. All splendidly made which William recognized as hispanic art. We proceed that the library had perhaps the

Largest collection of copies of the apostles book extent in christendom. And an immense quantity of commentaries on the tour next. Enormous volumes were devoted to the commentary of the apocalypse by Beatrice of the a burner. The text was more or less always the same

But we found a rich fantastic variation in the images and William recognized some of these he considered among the greatest illuminators of the realm of the asturias. Mages. For goodness and others. As we made these and other observations we arrived at the south tower. Which we had already approached the night before.

The s room of hispania windowless. Led into an e room and after we gradually went around the five rooms of the tower we came to the last. Without other passages which bore a red l. Again reading backward we found Leon a’s. The is south. On our map we are in Africa

Excellent Leon a’s. And this explains why we have found so many texts by infidel authors. And there are more i said rummaging in the cases. Canon of ever Santa and this codex with a beautiful calligraphy i don’t recognize.

From the decorations i would say it is a koran but unfortunately i have no arabic. The koran the Bible of the infidels a perverse book. A book containing the wisdom different from ours but you understand why they put it here where the lions the monsters are.

That is why we saw that book on the monstrous animals were you also found the unicorn. This area called Leon is contains the books. That the creators of the library considered books of falsehood. What’s over there there. They’re enlightened but from the arabic are you about rule howe. A treatise on canine hydrophobia.

And this is a book of treasures and this is de aspect the boasts of al-hasan. You see among monsters and falsehoods they have also placed works of science from which christians have much to learn. That was the way they thought in the times when the library was built.

But why have they also put a book with a unicorn among the falsehoods i asked. Obviously the founders of the library had strange ideas. They must have believed that this book which speaks of fantastic animals and beasts living in distant lands. Was part of the catalogue of falsehoods spread by the infidels. But

Is the unicorn a falsehood. It’s the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity. It can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest so that the animal catching her most chaste odor

Will go and lay it’s head in her lap offering itself as prey to the hunter’s snares. So it is said so but many tend to believe that it’s a fable an invention of the pagans. What a disappointment i said. I would have liked to encounter one crossing a wood.

Otherwise what’s the pleasure of crossing a wood. It’s not certain the animal doesn’t exist. Perhaps it’s different from the way it’s illustrated in these books. A venetian traveler went to very distant lands quite close to the fonz paradisi of which maps tell. And he saw unicorns

But he found them rough and clumsy and very ugly and black. I believe he saw a real animal with one horn on it’s brow. It was probably the same animal the ancient masters first described faithfully. They were never completely mistaken and had received from god the opportunity to see things we haven’t seen.

Then this description passing from October a task to apertura task. Was transformed through successive imaginative exercises and unicorns became fanciful animals white and gentle. So if you hear there’s a unicorn in a wood don’t go there with a va virgin. The animal might resemble more closely the venetians account

Than the description in this book. But did the ancient masters happen to receive from god the revelation of the unicorn true nature. Not the revelation the experience they were fortunate enough to be born in lands where a unicorn live. Or in times when unicorns lived in our own lands.

But then how can we trust ancient wisdom whose traces you are always seeking. If it is handed down by lying books that have interpreted it with such license. Books are not made to be believed but to be subjected to inquiry.

When we consider a book we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means. A precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind. The unicorn as these books speak of him embodies a moral truth. Or allegorical or an illogical.

But one that remains true as the idea that chastity is a noble virtue remains true. But as for the literal truth that sustains the other three truths. We have yet to see what original experience gave birth to the letter. The literal object must be discussed even if it’s higher meaning remains good.

In a book it is written that diamond can be cut off early with the Billy goats blood. My great master Roger bacon said it was not true simply because he had tried and it failed. But if the relation between a diamond and goat’s blood

Had had a nobler meaning that would have remained intact. Then higher truths can be expressed while the letter is lying i said. Still it grieves me to think this unicorn doesn’t exist or never existed or cannot exist one day.

It is not listened to impose confines on divine omnipotence and if god so willed. Unicorns could also exist. But console yourself they exist in these books which if they do not speak a real existence speak of possible existence. So must we then read books without faith which is a theological virtue.

There are two other theological virtues as well. The hope that the possible is and charity. Toward those who believed in good faith that the possible was. But what uses the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn’t believe in it.

It is of use to me as finances as prints in the snow were of use. After he was dragged to the pigs tub. The unicorn of the books is like a print. If the print exists there must have existed something whose print it is. But different from the print you say. Of course.

The print is not always have the same shape as the body that impressed it and it doesn’t always derived from the pressure of a body. At times it reproduces the impression a body has left in our mind it is the print of an idea. The idea is sign of things

And the image is sign of the idea sign of a sign. But from the image i reconstructive not the body. The idea that others had of it. And this is enough for you. Know because true learning must not be content with ideas which are in fact signs that

Must discover things in their individual truth. And so i would like to go back from this print of a print to the individual unicorn that stands at the beginning of the chain. As i would like to go back from the vague signs left by the Manchester murderer signs that could refer to many

To a sole individual the murderer himself. But it isn’t always possible in a short time and without the help of other signs. Then i can always and only speak of something that speaks to me of something else and so on. But the final something the true one. Does that never exist.

Perhaps it does it is the individual unicorn and don’t worry one of these days you will encounter it however black and ugly it may be. Unicorns lions arab authors and moors in general. I said at that point. No doubt this is the Africa of which the monks spoke. No doubt this is it

And if it is. We should find the African poets mentioned by pacific of tivoli. And in fact when we had retraced our steps and were in room l again we found in a case a collection of books by flora pronto of Julius marshy anus cappella and full dentures.

So this is where baron guard said the explanations of a certain secret should be i said. Almost here. He used the expression Phineas Africa and this was the expression that so infuriated maliki. The finis could be this last room unless. He cried out. By the seven churches of klondike noise

Haven’t you noticed something. What. Let’s go back to room s where we started. We went back to the first blind room where the verse read so bear thrown us virginity contour. It had four openings one led to room y which had a window on the inner octagon. Another led to room p.

Which continued along the outside facade the ispahani a sequence. The opening towards the tower led into room ii which we had just come through. Then there was a blank wall and finally an opening that led into a second blind room with the initial you. Room as was the one with the mirror.

Luckily on the wall immediately to my right or i would have been seized with fear again. Looking carefully at my map i realized the singularity of this room. Like the other blind rooms of the other three towers. It should have led to the central hub tagging a room. If it didn’t.

The entrance to the heft a gun would have to be in the adjacent blind room the eu. But this room. Which through one opening led into a room t with a window on the octagon and through another was connected to room as. Had the other three walls fall occupied with cases.

Looking around we confirmed what was now obvious from the map. For reasons of logic as well as strict symmetry. That tower should have had it’s have pagnell room but there was none. None i said there is no such room. No that’s not it. If there were no have gone

The other rooms would be larger whereas as they are more or less the shape of those at the other extremes. The room exists but cannot be reached. Hold up. Probably and there is the Venus Africa there is the place that those monks who are now dead were hovering about in their curiosity.

It’s walled up but that does not mean there is no access. Indeed there surely is one and finances founded or was given it’s description by a dunmow who had it from there and gar. Let’s re his notes again. He took finances as paper from his habit and re-read it.

The hand over the idol works on the first and the seventh of the four. He looked around. Why of course the eidolon as the image in the mirror. Been anxious was thinking in Greek and in that tongue even more than an hour’s. Idol on his image as well as ghost

And the mirror reflects our own image distorted. We ourselves mistook it for a ghost the other night. But what then can be the four super eidolon. Something over the reflecting surface. Then we must place ourselves at a certain angle in order to perceive something reflected in the

Mirror that corresponds to finances as description. We tried every position but with no result. Besides our images the mirror reflected only hazy outlines of the rest of the room dimly illuminated by the lamp. Then William meditated by super eidolon he could mean beyond the mirror.

Which would oblige us to go into the next room for surely this mirror is a door. The mirror was taller than a normal man fixed to the wall by a sturdy oak frame. We touched it in every manner we tried to thrust our fingers into it.

Our nails between the frame and the wall but the mirror was as fast as if it were part of the wall a stone among stones. And if not beyond it could be sue Barry Dolan. William murmured and meanwhile raised his arms stood on tiptoe and

Ran his hand along the upper edge of the frame. He found nothing but dust. For that matter William reflected gloomily even if beyond it were a room the book we are seeking and the others sought is no longer in that room because it was taken away first by been anxious and then

God knows where by baron gar. But perhaps baron god brought it back here. Know. That evening we were in the library and everything suggests he died not long after the theft that same night in the boundary. Otherwise we would have seen him again the next morning. No matter.

For the present we have established where the finis Africa is and we have almost all the necessary information for perfecting our map of the library. You must admit that many of the labyrinths mysteries have now been clarified. We went through other rooms recording all our discoveries on my map.

We came upon rooms devoted solely to writings on mathematics and astronomy. Others with works in aramaic characters which neither of us knew. Others and even less recognizable characters perhaps texts from India. We moved between the two overlapping sequences that said judea and. Egypt us. In short

Not to bore the reader with the chronicle of our deciphering when we later perfected the map definitively we were convinced that the library was truly laid out and arranged according to the image of the to requiem orb. To the north we found anglia and Germany

Which along the west wall were connected by gallia. Which turned then at the extreme west into hibernia and toward the south wall roma paradise of Latin classics and hispania. Then to the south came Leon s and Egypt whose which to the east became you dear and funds and i.

Between east and north along the wall a kiah a good select the key is William expressed it to indicate Greece and in those four rooms there was finally a great horde of poets and philosophers of pagan antiquity. The system of words was eccentric. At times it proceeded in a single direction

At other times it went backward and still others in a circle. Often as i have said before the same letter served to compose two different words and in these instances the room had one case devoted to one subject and one to another.

But obviously there was no point looking for a golden rule in this arrangement. It was purely a mnemonic device to allow the librarian to find a given work. To say of a book that it was found in quarter a key. Meant that it was in the fourth room counting

From the one in which the initial a appeared and then to identify it presumably the librarian knew by heart the root circular or straight that he should follow. As a Kyle was distributed over four rooms arranged in a square. So we promptly learned the game of the blank walls. For example

Approaching a coyote from the east you found none of the rooms lead to the following rooms. The labyrinth at this point ended and to reach the north tower you had to pass through the other three. But naturally the librarians entered from the fans knowing perfectly well that to go

Let us say into anglia and to pass through Egypt as is bania gallia and Germany. With these and other fine discoveries are fruitful exploration in the library ended. But before saying that we prepared contentedly to leave it. Only to be involved in other events i will narrate shortly.

I must make a confession to my reader. I said that our exploration was undertaken originally to seek the key to the mysterious place but that as we lingered along the way in the rooms we were marking down by subject and arrangement. We leave through books of various kinds as if

We were exploring a mysterious continent dory terra incognita. And usually the second exploration proceeded by common accord. As William and i browsed through the same books i pointing out the most curious ones to him and he explaining to me many things i was unable to understand. But at a certain point

And just as we were moving around the rooms of the south tower known as Leon as. My master happened to stop in a room rich in arabic works with an optical drawings. And since we were that evening provided not with one but with two lamps.

I moved in my curiosity into the next room. Realizing that the wisdom and the prudence of the libraries play Manning had assembled along one of it’s walls books that certainly could not be handed out to anyone to read. Because they dealt in various ways with diseases of body and spirit

And were almost always written by infidel scholars. And my eye fell on a book not large but adorned with miniatures far removed luckily from the subject. Flowers vines animals in pairs some medicinal herbs. The title was speculum a Maurice by Maximus of Bologna and it included quotations

From many other works all on the melody of love. As the reader will understand it did not require much once more to inflame my mind which had been numb since morning and too excited again with the girl’s image. All that day i had driven myself to dispel my morning thoughts

Repeating that they were not those of a sober balanced novice and moreover since the day’s events had been sufficiently rich and intense to distract me. My appetites had been dormant. So that i thought i had freed myself by now from what had been but a passing restlessness.

Instead i had only to see that book and i was forced to say date a fabulous meritor and i discovered that i was more sick with love than i had believed. I learned later that reading books of medicine you are always convinced you feel the pains of which they speak.

So it was that the mere reading of those pages glanced at hastily and fear that William were enter the room and asked me what i was so diligently investigating. Caused me to believe that i was suffering from that very disease. Whose symptoms were so splendidly described that if.

On the one hand i was distressed to discover i was sick and on the infallible evidence of so many outdoor activities. On the other hand i rejoice to see my own situation depicted so vividly. Convincing myself that even if i was ill my illness was so to speak normal

Inasmuch as countless others had suffered in the same way and the quoted authors might have taken me personally as the model for their descriptions. So i was moved by the pages of ibn Hassan who defines love as a rebel illness whose treatment lies within itself.

For the sick person does not want to be healed and he who is ill with it is reluctant to get well and god knows this was true. I realized why that morning i had been so stirred by everything i saw.

Him it seems that love enters through the eyes as basil of an Kira also says. An unmistakable symptom he who is seized by such an illness displays an excessive gaiety. While he wishes at the same time to keep to himself and seeks solitude as i had done that morning.

While other phenomena affecting him are a violent restlessness and and all that makes him so speechless. I was frightened to read that the sincere lover. When denied the sight of the beloved object must fall into a wasting state that often reaches the point of confining him to bed

And sometimes the malady overpowers the brain and the subject loses his mind and raves. Obviously i had not yet reached that phase because i had been quite alert in the exploration of the library. But i read with apprehension that if the illness worsens death can ensue

And i asked myself whether the joy derived from thinking of the girl was worth the supreme sacrifice of the body. Apart from all due consideration of the soul’s health. I learned further from some words of st hildegard that the melancholy humor i had felt during the day which i attributed to a sweet

Feeling of pain at the girl’s absence. Was perilously close to the feeling experienced by one who strays from the harmonious and perfect state man experiences in paradise. And this negro at Amara melancholy is produced by the breadth of the serp hunt and the influence of the devil.

An idea shared also by infidels of equal wisdom. For my eyes fell on the lines attributed to abu bakar Muhammad ibn Zachary a a razzie. Who in a liebert continence identifies amorous melancholy with lycanthropy. Which drives it’s victim to behave like a wolf. His description clutched my throat.

First the lovers seemed changed in the external appearance. Their eyesight weakens their eyes become hollow and without tears. Their tongue slowly dries up and pustules appear on it. The whole body is parched and they suffer constant thirst. At this point they spend the day lying face down

And on the face and the tip. Marks like dog bites appear and finally the victims roam through the cemeteries at night like wolves. Finally i had no more doubts as to the gravity of my situation when i read quotations from the great ever center

Who defined love as an assiduous thought of a melancholy nature. Born as a result of one’s thinking again and again of the features gestures or behavior of a person of the opposite sex. With what vivid fidelity had ever center described my case.

It does not originate as an illness but is transformed into illness when remaining unsatisfied it becomes obsessive thought. And why did i feel so obsessed i who god forgive me had been well satisfied. Or was perhaps what had happened the previous night not satisfaction of love.

But how is this illness satisfied then ten. And so there is an incessant flutter of the eyelids irregular respiration. Now the victim laughs now weeps and the pulse throbs and indeed mind throbbed and my breathing stopped as i read those lines. Ever since advised and infallible method already proposed

By galen for discovering whether someone is in love. Grasp the rest of the sufferer and utter many names of members of the opposite sex. Until you discover which name makes the pulse accelerate. I was afraid my master would enter abruptly seize my arm and observe in the throbbing of my veins my secret.

Of which i would have been greatly ashamed. Alas as remedy ever senna suggested uniting the two lovers in matrimony which would cure the illness. Truly he was an infidel though a shrewd one because he did not consider the condition of the Benedict another’s. Thus condemned never to recover.

Or rather consecrated through his own choice or the wise choice of his relatives never to fall ill. Luckily i have a center though not thinking of the Clooney a quarter did consider the case of lovers who cannot be joined and advised as radical treatment hotbeds.

Was barren guy trying to be healed of his love sickness for the dead at elmo. But could one suffer love sickness for a being of one’s own sex or was that only bestial lust. And was the night i had spent perhaps not bestial and lustful.

No of course not i told myself at once. It was most sweet and then immediately added. No you are wrong and so it was an illusion of the devil it was most bestial and if you send in being a beast you sin all the more now in refusing to acknowledge it.

But then i read again and ever center that there were also other remedies. For example enlisting the help of old and expert women who would spend their time denigrating the beloved. And it seems that old women are more expert than men in this task. Perhaps this was the solution

But i could not find any old women at the Abbey or young ones actually. And so i would have to ask some month to speak ill to me of the girl but who. And besides could among know women as well as an old gossip would know them.

The last solution suggested by the sarazen was truly a modest for it required the unhappy lover to couple with many slave girls. A remedy quite unsuitable for a monk. And so i asked myself finally how can a young monk be healed of love. Is there truly no salvation for him.

Should i perhaps turn to save a wryness and his herbs. I did find a passage in Arnold a villanova an author i had heard William mentioned with great esteem. Who had it that love sickness was born from an excess of humors and numa.

When the human organism finds itself in an excess of dampness and heat. Because the blood which produces the generative seen. Increasing through excess produces excess of seed a comply the ceo of an area. And an intense desire for union in man and woman. There is an estimated virtue situated in the dorsal

Part of the median ventricle of the encephalitis. What is that i wondered. Whose purpose is to perceive the insensitive intentions perceived by the senses. And when desire for the object perceived by the senses becomes too strong. The estimated faculty is upset and it feeds only on the phantom of the beloved person.

Then there is an inflammation of the whole soul and body as sadness alternates with joy. Because heat which in moments of despair descends into the deepest parts of the body and chills the skin. In moments of joy rises to the surface inflaming the face.

The treatment suggested by Arnold consisted in trying to lose the assurance in the hope of reaching the beloved object so the thought would go away. Why in that case i am cured or nearly cured i said to myself. Because i have little or no hope of seeing the object of my thoughts again

And if i sought no hope of gaining it and if i gained it none of possessing it again. And if i possessed it of keeping it near me because of both my monkish state and the duties imposed on me by my family’s station. I am saved

I said to myself and i closed the book and collected myself just as William entered the room. Night. In which Salvatore allows himself to be discovered wretchedly by Bernard de. The girl up by ad so was arrested as a witch and all go to bed more unhappy and worried than before.

We were coming back down into the refectory when we heard some loud noises and saw some faint flashes of light from the direction of the kitchen. William promptly blew out his lamp. Clinging to the walls we approached the door to the kitchen.

We realized the sound came from outside but the door was open. Then the voices and lights moved away and some one slam the door violently. There was a great tumult which heralded something unpleasant. Swiftly we went back through the assyrian reemerged in the now deserted church

Went out by the south door and glimpsed a flickering of torches in the cloister. We approached and in the confusion we must have rushed outside like the many others already on the spot who had come from either the dormitory or the pilgrims hospice.

We saw archers firmly grasping Salvatore why does the white of his eyes and a woman who was crying. My heart contracted. It was she the girl of my thoughts. As she saw me she recognized me and cast me a desperate imploring look. My impulse was to rush and free her

But William restrained me whispering some far from affectionate reproaches. Monks and guests were now rushing in from all sides. The abbott arrived as did Bernard g to whom the captain of the archers made a brief report. This is what had happened.

By the inquisitors order they patrolled the whole compound at night paying special attention to the path that went from the main gate to the church the gardens and the facade of the division. Why i wondered. Then i understood yeah. Obviously because Bernard had heard from servants or from the cooks

Rumors about nocturnal movement between the outer walls in the kitchen. Perhaps without learning exactly who was responsible. And perhaps the foolish Salvatore as he divulged his intentions to me had already spoken in the kitchen or the Barnes to some wretch who intimidated by questioning that afternoon

Had thrown this rumor as a sop to Bernard. Moving cautiously and in darkness through the fog the archers had finally caught Salvatore in the woman’s company as he was fiddling with the kitchen door. A woman in this holy place and with a monk. Bernard said sternly addressing the Abbot. Most magnificent lord

He continued. If it involved only a violation of the vow of chastity this man’s punishment would be a matter for your jurisdiction. But since we are not yet sure that the traffic kings of these two wretches hasn’t something to do with the well being of all the guests.

We must first cast light on this mystery. Now you wrote there. And from Salvatore his bosom he sees the obvious bundle the poor man was trying to hide. What’s this you have here. I already knew. A knife a black cat which once the bundle was unwrapped fled with a furious yowl

And two eggs. Now broken and slimy which to everyone else. I soon learned what promises. The archers searched the girl with sly laughter and lascivious words and they found on her a little dead rooster still to be plucked btw. Ill luck would have it that in the night when all

Cats are grey the cock seemed black like the cat. I was thinking however that it took very little to lure her four hungry creature who the night before it abandoned and for love of me her precious ox heart. Aha. Bernard cried and a tone of great concern. Black cat and cock.

Ah i know such paraphernalia. He noticed William among those present. Do you not also recognize them brother William. Will you not inquisitor and kilkenny three years ago where that girl had intercourse with the devil who appeared to her in the form of a blur cat.

To me it seemed my master remained silent out of cowardice. I tug at his sleeve shook him whispered to him in despair. Tell him tell him it was to eat. He freed himself from my grip and spoke politely denard.

I do not believe you need my past experiences to arrive at your conclusions he said. Oh no there are far more authoritative witnesses. Bernard smiled. Stephen of bourbon in his treatise on the seven gifts of the holy spirit. Tells how st Dominic after preaching at fangio against the heretics.

Announced to certain women that they would see the master they had served till then and suddenly into their midst sprang a frightful cat the size of a large dog dog with huge blazing eyes a bloody tongue that came to its naval. A short tail straight in the air

So that however the animal turned to display the evil of it’s behind more fitted than any other as is proper for that anus which many devotees of Satan. Not least the knights templar have always been accustomed to kiss in the course of their meetings. And after moving about the women for an hour

The cat spraying on the bell Robin climbed up at leaving his stinking waste behind. And he’s not the cat the animal beloved by the catalysts who according to Alain st insular are so called from cartoon. Because of this beast whose posterior they kiss considering it the incarnation of Lucifer.

And is this disgusting practice not confirmed also by William of la verna. In the day lady boosie. And as albertus magn. That cats are potential devils. And does not my venerable brothers Jacques fournier recall that on the deathbed of the inquisitor Geoffrey of kaka son. Two black cats appeared

Who were no other than devils come to taunt those remains. A horrified murmur ran through the group of monks many of whom made the sign of the holy cross. My lord abbott my lord Abbot. Bernard was saying meanwhile with a virtuous mean. Perhaps your magnificence does not know what

Sinners are accustomed to do with these instruments. But i know well god help me. I have seen most wicked men in the darkest hours of the night along with others of their stripe. Use black cats to achieve wonders that they could never deny.

To straddle certain animals and travel immense spaces under cover of night dragging their slaves. Transformed into lustful link you buy. And the devil shows himself to them. Or at least so they strongly believe in the form of a cock or some other black animal and with him.

Do not ask me how they even lied together. And i know for certain that not long ago in Avenue itself with necromancy ease of this sort. Filters and ointments were prepared to make attempts on the life of our lord pope himself poisoning his foods.

The pope was able to defend himself and identify the toxin only because he was supplied with prodigious jewels in the form of serpents tongues. Fortified by wondrous emeralds and rubies that through divine power were able to reveal the presence of poison in the foods.

The king of France had given him eleven of these most precious tons thank heaven and only thus could our lord pope elude death. Through the pontiffs enemies went still further. And everyone knows what was learned about the heretic. Bernard daly sieur. Arrested ten years ago.

Books of black magic were found in his house with notes written on the most wicked pages containing all the instructions for making wax figures in order to harm enemies. And would you believe it. In his house were also found figures that reproduced with truly admirable craft the image of the pope

With little red circles on the vital parts of the body. And everyone knows that such a figure hung by a string is placed before a mirror and then the vital parts are pierced with a pin and. Oh but why do i dwell on these vile disgusting practices.

The pope himself spoke of them and described them and condemned them just last year. In his constitution superior illegals specular. And i truly are op you have a copy in this rich library of yours. Where it can be properly meditated on. We have it we have it.

The abbott eagerly confirmed in great distress. Very well Bernard concluded. Now the case seems clear to me. Amongst seduced a witch and some ritual which fortunately did not take place. To what end. This is what we will learn and i am ready to say sacrifice a few hours sleep to learn it.

Will your magnificence put at my disposal a place where this man can be confined. We have some cells in the basement of the smithy. The Abbot said which fortunately are very rarely used and have stood empty for years. Fortunately or unfortunately. Bernard remarked.

And he ordered the archers to have someone show them the way and to take the two prisoners to separate cells. And the men would tie the monk well to some rings set in the wall so that Bernard could go down shortly and. Questioning him look him in the face. As for the girl

He added it was clear who she was but it was not worth questioning her that night. Other trials awaited her before she would be burned as a witch. And if which she were she would not speak easily. But the monk might still repent perhaps.

And he glared at the trembling Salvatore as if to make him understand he was being offered a last chance. Telling the truth and Bernard added denouncing his accomplices. The two were dragged off one silent and destroyed almost feverish. The other weeping and kicking and screaming like an animal being led to the shambles.

But neither Bernard nor the archers nor i myself could understand what she was saying and her peasant ton. For all her shouting she was as if mute. There are words that give power others that make us all the more derelict. Into this latter category belong the vulgar words of the simple

To whom the lord has not granted the boon of self expression in the universal tongue of knowledge and power. Once again i was tempted to follow her once again William grimm restrained me. Be still for he said. The girl is lost she is burnt flesh.

As i observed the scene with terror staring at the girl in a swarm of contradictory thoughts. I felt someone touch my shoulder. I don’t know why but even before i turned i recognized the touchable bettino. You are looking at the which i you not he asked me.

And i knew he could not know of my story and therefore he was saying this only because he had caught. With his terrible penetration of human passions the intensity of my gaze. No i defended myself. I am not looking at her or

Rather perhaps i am looking at her but she isn’t a witch. We don’t know perhaps she is innocent. And you look at her because she is beautiful. She is beautiful is she not. He asked me with extraordinary warmth pressing my arm. If you look at her because she is beautiful

And you are upset by her. But i know you are upset because the sin of which she is suspected makes her all the more fascinating to you. If you look at her and feel desire that alone makes her a witch. The young guard my son.

The beauty of the body stops at the skin. If men could see what is beneath the skin as with the links of the osha. They would shudder at the sight of a woman. All that grease consists of mucus and blood humors and bio.

If you think of what is hidden in the nostrils in the throat and in the belly he you will find only filth. And if it revolts you to touch mucus or dung with your fingertip how could we desire to embrace the sac that contains that done. And excessive vomiting seized me.

I didn’t want to hear any more. My master who had also heard came to my rescue. He brusquely approach to bettino grasped his arm and freed it from mine. That will do a bit know he said that girl will soon be under torture then on the pyre

She will become exactly as you say mucus blood humors and bile. But it will be men like us who dig from beneath her skin that which the lord wanted to be protected and adorned by that skin. And when it comes to prime matter you are no better than she leave the boy alone.

Uber Tina was upset. Perhaps i have sinned he murmured. I have surely sinned what else can a sinner do. Now everyone was going back inside commenting on the event. William remained a little while with Michael and the other minor writes. Who were asking him his impressions. Bernard now has an argument

Ambiguous though would be. In the Abbey there are necromancers circulating who do the same things that were done against the pope in avignon. It is not certainly proof and in the first place it cannot be used to disturb tomorrow’s meeting.

Tonight he will try to ring from that poor wretch some other clue which i am sure Bernard will not use immediately tomorrow morning. He will keep it in reserve. It will be of use later to upset the progress of the discussions if they should ever take a direction and pleasing to him.

Could he force the monk to say something to be used against us. Michael of cheesiness asked. William was dubious. Let us hope not he said. I realized that if Salvatore told Bernard what he had told us about his own past and the sellers

And if he hinted at something about their relationship with bettino fleeting though it may have been. A highly embarrassing situation would be created. In any case let’s wait and see what happens William said with Serenity. For that matter Michael everything was already decided beforehand but you want to try. I do Michael said

And the lord will help me may st Francis intercede for all of us. Amen or replied. But that is not necessarily possible was Williams’ irreverent comment. St Francis could be off somewhere waiting for judgment day without seeing the lord face to face. A curse on that heretic John. I heard master Jerome mutter.

As each went back to bed. If he now robs us of the saints help what will become of us poor sinners that we are. Chapter five. Fifth day. Prime. In which there occurs a fraternal debate regarding the poverty of Jesus. My heart racked by a thousand anxieties after the scene of the night

I woke on the morning of the fifth day when prime was already ringing as William shook me roughly. Warning me that the two locations would be meeting shortly. I looked out of the cell window and saw nothing. The fog of the previous day was now a milky

Blanket that totally covered the high plane. When i went outside i saw the Abbey as i had never seen it before. A few of the major buildings the church the division the chapter house. Could be discerned even at a distance though still vague shadows among shadows.

While the rest of the constructions were visible only at a few paces. Shapes of things and animals seemed to rise suddenly from the void. People materialized from the mist first gray like ghosts. Then gradually though not easily recognizable. Born in a northern clime i was not unfamiliar with that element which at another

Moment would have pleasantly reminded me of the planes and the castle of my birth. But that morning the condition of the air seemed painfully kind to the condition of my soul and the sadness with which i awakened increased as i slowly approached the chapter house.

A few feet from the building i saw Bernard g taking his leave of another person whom i did not immediately recognize. Then as he passed me i saw it was maliki. 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 maliki 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 a modest dimensions and sober design. I realized that it had recently been rebuilt over the remains of a primitive herbaceous church. Perhaps partly destroyed by fire.

Entering from the outside you passed beneath the 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 it’s 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 of the tympanum 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. Where the twelve apostles who had received from him the mission to go forth and preach among all peoples. Over Christ’s head in an art 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 kappa donations the arabs the Indians the phrygian. The byzantines the Armenia eons the scythians. The romans. But along with their men thirty round frames that made an arc above the arc of twelve panels.

Where the inhabitants of the unknown worlds of whom only the physiology goose. And the vague reports of travellers speak slightly. Many of them were unfamiliar to me others i identified. For example routes with six fingers on each hand fawns born from the worms that developed between the bark and the pulp of trees.

Sirens were scaly tails who seduce semen. Ethiopia their bodies all black defending themselves against the fire of the sun by digging underground caverns. As centers men to the navel and asses below. Cycler ps each with a single eye the size of a shield.

Scylla with a girl’s head and bosom as she wolf’s belly and a dolphin’s tail. The hairy men of India who live in swamps and on the river epic melodies. The center sf ally who cannot say a word without barking. Sire pods 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. Estimates from Greece. Who have no mouth but breathe through their nostrils and live only on air. Bearded women of Armenia. Pygmies.

Blimey i 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 camels hooves. And those whose souls are reversed so that.

Following them by their footprints one arrives always at the place when 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 Cersei. 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 Concord. Of unity achieved in the word of Christ most. Splendid acumen. A good augury i said to myself for the meeting to take place beyond this threshold were 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 center to be 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 and

Serenity 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 allegations complete facing one another in a series of benches arranged in a hemi cycle.

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 minor ites 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 where brother Arnold of aquitaine brother Hugh of newcastle and brother William of on wick

Who had taken part in the brooder chapter and also the bishop of capa and baron got to loney. Been a gratiot of bergamot and other minor writes from the avignon court. On the opposite side said Lawrence the coin bachelor of avignon. The bishop of padua and Jean de no.

Doctor of theology in Paris. Next to Bernard de silent and pensive there was the Dominican Jean de bon. In Italy called Giovanni del bena. Years before William told me he had been in inquisitor at narbonne where he had tried many regards

But when he found heresy in a proposition concerning the poverty of Christ. Baron got alone he 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 Bruges chapter. Finally there were still others on the side of the Avenue unease including the bishop of al berea. The session was opened by abo

Who deemed it opportune to sum up recent events. He recalled how in the year of our lord thirteen twenty two 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 proper thirty or feud and this truth was a matter of catholic faith and doctrine deduced from various passages in the canonical books. Wherefore renunciation of ownership of all things was meritorious and holy.

And the early fathers of the church militant and follow this holy rule. The council of vienne and thirteen twelve it also subscribed to this truth and pope John himself in thirteen seventeen in the constitution regarding the condition of the friars minor which begins. Corundum exegete.

Had referred to the deliberations of that council as devoutly composed lucid sound and mature. Whence the Bruges chapter considering that what the apostolic see it always approved a sound dock Karen should always be held as accepted. Nor should it be straight from in any way

It merely confirmed that council’s decision with the signature of such masters of sacred theology his brother William of england. Brother Henry of Germany brother Arnold of aquitaine provincials and ministers and also with the seal of brother Nicholas minister of France. Brother William block bachelor. The minister general and the four ministers provincial.

Brother Thomas of Bologna. Brother Peter of the province of st Francis. Brother ferdinand of castello. And brother Simon of turin. However abo added the following year the pope issued the decreto out the candy tour Rome canal gnome against which brother boner gratiot of bergamot appealed

Considering it contrary to the interests of his order. The pope then took down that decreto 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 boner gratiot was held in prison for a year. Nor could there be any doubt as to the pontiffs severity because that same year he issued the now very well known calm intern on new laws. In which the theses of the Bruges 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 thirteen twenty four Louis the bavarian had intervened with the declaration of Zach’s and hausen. In which for no good reason he confirmed that theses approved you. Nor was it comprehensible bertrand remarked with a thin smile

That the emperor should claim so enthusiastically a poverty he did not practice in the least. Setting himself against the lord pope calling him inimical parties and saying he was bent on fomenting scandal and discord and finally calling him a heretic and dita her easy arc. Not exactly above 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 decreto queer corundum. And that eventually he had sternly bitton Michel of designer to appear before him. It sent letters of excuse declaring himself il something no one doubted

And had sent in his dead brother John finanza and brother Amelia custodian from perugia. But it so happened the cardinal went on that the gloves of perugia had informed the pope that far from being ill brother Michael was in communication with Louis of Bavaria.

In any case what was passed was passed and now brother Michael looked well and serene and so was expected in avignon. However it was better the cardinal admitted to consider beforehand as prudent men from both sides were now doing. What Michael would finally say to the pope

Since everyone’s aim was still not to exacerbate but rather to settle for eternally a dispute that had no reason to exist between a loving father and his devoted sons. And which until then had been kept ablaze only by the interference of secular men whether emperors or vice roys

Who had nothing to do with the questions of holy mother church. Abo then spoke up and said that though he was a man of the church and Abbot of an order to which the church owed much. A murmur of respect and deference was heard from both sides of the hemicycle.

He still did not feel the emperor should remain aloof from such questions for the main reasons that brother William of baskerville would expand in due course. But abba went on. It was nevertheless proper that the first part of the debate should take place

Between the papal envoys and the representatives of those sons of st Francis who. By their very participation in this meeting showed themselves to be the most devoted sons of the pope. And then he asked that brother Michael or his nominee indicate the position he meant to uphold in avignon.

Michaels said that to his great and joyous emotion there was in their midst that morning uber tino of casale. From whom the pope himself in thirteen twenty two had asked for a thorough report on the question of poverty. And uber tino could best sum up

With that lucidity airy edition and devout faith that all recognized in him the capita the points of those ideas which now unswervingly were those of the franciscan order. Liberty no Rose and as soon as he began to speak. I understood why he had aroused so much enthusiasm

Both as a preacher and as a courtier. Impassioned in his gesticulation his voice persuasive. His smile fascinating his reasoning clear and consequential he held his listeners fast for all the time he spoke. He began a very learned disquisition on the reasons that supported the perugia theses.

He said that first of all it had to be recognized that Christ and the apostles were in a double condition. Because they were prelates of the church of the new testament and in this respect they possessed. As regards the authority of dispensation and distribution

To give to the poor into the ministers of the church. As is written in the fourth chapter of the acts of the apostles and this point no nobody disputes. But secondarily Christ and the apostles must be considered as individual persons. The base of every religious perfection and perfect despises of the world.

And on this score two ways of having are positive. One of which is civil and worldly which the imperial laws define with the words in Bonnie’s nurseries. Because we call ours those goods of which we have the defence and which have taken from us we have the right to claim.

Whereby it is one thing to defend in a civil and worldly sense one’s own possession against him who would take it appealing to the imperial judge. To affirm that Christ and the apostles owned things in this sense is heretical because as Matthew says in chapter five if any man

Will sue the at the law and take away thy coat let him have thy cloak also. Nor does Luke say any differently in chapter six where Christ dismisses from himself all power and lordship and imposes the same on his apostles.

And consider further Matthew chapter nineteen in which Peter says to the lord that to follow him they have left everything. But in the other way temporal things can yet be held for the purpose of common fraternal charity. And in this way Christ and his disciples possess some

Goods by natural right which right by some is called used poly. That is to say the law of heaven to sustain nature. Which without human intervention is consonant with proper reason. Whereas use forty is power that derives from human covenant. Before the first division of things as far as ownership was concerned.

They were like those things today which are not among any one’s possessions and are granted to him who takes them. Things were in a certain sense common to all men. Whereas it was only after original sin that our progenitors began to divide up ownership of things

And thus began worldly dominion as we now i know it. But Christ and the apostles held things in the first way and so they had clothing and the bread and fishes and as Paul says in first Timothy. Having food and Raymond let us be there with content.

Wherefore Christ and his disciples did not hold these things in possession but in use. Their absolute poverty remaining and ten act. Which had already been recognized by pope Nicholas in the decreto. Eggs eat qui semi not. But on the opposite side Jean that no Rose to say that uber Tina’s positions seemed

To him contrary both to proper reason and to the proper interpretation of scripture. Whereas with goods perishable with use such as bread and foods. A simple right of use cannot be considered nor can de facto use be positive but one the abuse. Everything the believers held in common in the primitive church.

As is deduced from acts two and three. They held on the basis of the same type of ownership they had had before their conversion. The apostles. After the descent of the holy spirit possessed farms in judea. The vow of living without property does not extend to what man needs in order to live.

And when Peter said he had left everything he did not mean he had renounced property. Adam had ownership and property of things. The servant who receives money from his master certainly does not make use or abuse of it. The words of the eggs equally seminar to which the minor rights are always referring

And which establish that the friars minor have only the use of what serves them without having control and ownership must be referring only to goods that are not consumed with use. And in fact if the eggs eat included perishable goods it would sustain the impossible.

De facto use cannot be distinguished from juridical control. Every human right on the basis of which material goods are owned is contained in the laws of kings. Christ as a mortal man from the moment of his conception was owner of all earthly goods.

And as god god he received from the father universal control over everything. He was owner of clothing food money for tribute and offerings of the faithful and if he was poor it was not because he had no property but because he did not receive it’s fruits.

For simple juridical control separated from the collection of interest does not enrich the possessor. And finally. Even if the executive had said otherwise the Roman pontiff in everything concerning faith and morals can revoke the decisions of his predecessors and can even make contrary assertions.

It was at this point that brother Jerome bishop of copper Rose vehemently his beard shaking with wrath even though he tried to make his words sound conciliatory. He began an argument that to me seemed fairly confused. What i will say to the holy father and myself who will say it.

I submit to his correction because i truly believe John is the vicar of Christ and for this confession i was seized by the saracens. And i will refer first to an event recorded by a great doctor in the dispute that arose one day among monks as to who’s the father of melchizedek.

Then the abbott copies questioned about this shook his head and declared woe to you copies for you seek only those things that god does not command you to seek and neglect those he does command. There as is readily deduced from my example it is so clear that Christ and the blessed virgin and

The apostles held nothing individually or in common. That it would be less clear to recognize that Jesus was man and god at the same time and yet it seems clear to me that anyone denying the evidence of the former must then deny the latter.

He spoke triumphantly and i saw William raise his eyes to heaven. I suspect he considered Jerome’s syllogism quite effective and i cannot say he was wrong. But even more effective it seemed to me was the infuriated and contrary argumentation of Jean de bon.

Who said that he who affirms something about the poverty of Christ firms what is seen or not seen with the eye. Whereas to define his simultaneous humanity and divinity faith intervenes so that the two propositions cannot be compared. In reply Jerome was more acute than his opponent. Oh no dear brother he said

I think exactly the opposite is true because all the gospels declare Christ was a man and ate and drank and as his most evident miracles demonstrate he was also god and all this is immediately obvious. Magicians and soothsayers also work miracles the bones said smugly. True Jerome replied but through magic art.

Would you compare Christ’s miracles to magic art. The assembly murmured indignantly that they would not consider such a thing. And finally Jerome went on feeling he was now close to victory. Would his lordship the cardinal del progetto want to consider heretical the belief in Christ’s poverty.

When this proposition is the basis of the rule of an order such as the franciscan whose sons have gone to every realm to preach and shed their blood from Morocco to India. Holy spirit a Peter Spain will your muttered protect us. Most beloved brother the bone then cried taking a step forward.

Speak if you will of the blood of your monks but do not forget that same tribute has also been paid by religious of other orders. With all due respect to my lord cardinal Jerome shouted no Dominican ever died among the infidels whereas in my own time alone nine mine rights have been martyred.

The Dominican bishop of our berea red in the face now stood up. I can prove that before any minor rights were in tartary pope innocence and freedom and against their. Did Jerome said snickering. Well i know that the mine rights have been in tartary for eighty years

And they have forty churches throughout the country whereas the Dominicans have only five churches all along the coast and perhaps fifteen monks and all and that settles the question. It does not settle any question at all the bishop of albury has shouted because these minor eye to produce heretics as bitches produce puppies

Claim everything for themselves boast of martyrs but have fine churches sumptuous vestments and buy and sell like all the other religious. Know my lord no Jerome interrupted they do not buy and sell on our own but through the procurator of the apostolic see and the procurator have possession

While the minor i have only the use. Is that so the bishop sneered and how many times then have you sold without procurers i know the story of some farms that. If i did so i was wrong Jerome hastily interrupted.

Not to turn that over to the order may have been a weakness on my part. Venerable brothers abo then intervened our problem is not whether the minor rights are poor but whether our lord was poor. Well then at this point Jerome raised his voice again.

On that question i have an argument that cuts like a sword. Saint Francis protect thy sons. William said without much confidence. The argument Jerome continued. Is that the orientals in the Greeks far more familiar than we with the doctrine of the holy fathers are convinced of the poverty of Christ

And if those heretics and schismatic so clearly uphold such a clear truth. Do we want to be more heretical and schismatic olden day by denying it. These orientals if they heard some of our know Amber preaching against this truth would stone them. What are you saying the bishop of albury equipped. Why then

Do they not stone the Dominican so preach precisely against this. Dominicans why no one has ever seen them down there. Al berea his face purple observed that this monk Jerome had been in Greece perhaps fifteen years whereas he had been there since his boyhood.

Jerome replied that the Dominican arborea berea might perhaps have been in Greece but living a sybaritic life and find bishop’s palaces. Whereas he a franciscan had been there not fifteen years but twenty two and had preached before the emperor error in constantinople.

Then I’ll berea running short on arguments started to cross the space that separated him from the minor writes indicating in a loud voice and with words i dare not repeat his firm intention to pull off the beard of the bishop of capa whose masculinity he called into question

And whom he planned to punish by the logic of an eye for an eye shoving that beard in a certain place. The other minor writes rush to form a barrier and defend their brother. The Avenue unease thought it useful to lend the Dominican hand

And lord have mercy on the best among thy son’s. A brawl ensued which the Abbot and the cardinal tried to quell. In the tumult that followed minor rights and Dominicans said grave things to one another. As if each were a Christian fighting the same citizens.

The only ones who remained in their seats were William on one side and Bernard yee on the other. William seemed sad and Bernard happy if you can call happiness the faint smile that curled the inquisitors lip. Are there no better arguments i asked my master

As our berea tugged at the beard at the bishop of copper to prove or refute the poverty of Christ. While you can affirm both positions my good ad so William said and you will never be able to establish on the basis of the gospels whether

And to what extent Christ considered as his property the tunic he wore which he then perhaps threw away when it was worn out. And if you liked the doctrine of Thomas aquinas on property is bolder than that of us minor rights. We say we owe nothing and have everything in use.

He said consider yourselves also owners provided that if any one lacks what you possess you Grant him it’s use and out of obligation not charity. But the question is not whether Christ was poor it is whether the church must be poor

And poor it is not so much mean owning a palace or not. It means rather keeping or renouncing the right to legislate an earthly matters. Then this i said is why the emperor is so interested in what the minor rights say about poverty. Exactly

The minor rights are playing the emperor’s game against the pope. But my silliest and i consider it a two sided game and we would like the empire to support our view and serve our idea of human rule. And will you say this when you are called upon to speak.

If i say if i fulfill my mission which was to expand the opinions of the imperial theologians. But if i say it my mission fails because i ought to be facilitating a second meeting in avignon. And i don’t believe John would agree to my going there to say these things. And so.

And so i am trapped between two opposing forces like an ass who does not know which of two sacks of hay to eat. The time is not ripe. Marcellus raves of an impossible transformation immediately. But Louis is no better than his predecessors even if for the present he remains the

Only bulwark against a wretch like John. Perhaps i shall have to speak unless they end up killing one another first. In any case head so write it all down. Let at least some trace remain of what is happening today. As we were speaking and truly i do not know how we managed

To hear each other the dispute reached it’s climax. The archers intervened. At a sign from Bernard guid to keep the two factions apart. But like procedures and besieged on both sides of the walls of the fortress they hurled insults and rebuttals at one another which i record here at row random

Unable to attribute them to specific speakers and with the premise that the phrases were not uttered in turn as would happen in a dispute in my country but in mediterranean fashion one overlapping another like the waves of an angry sea. The gospel says Christ had a purse. Shut up

You people paint that purse even on crucifixes what do you say then of the fact that our lord when he entered Jerusalem went back every night to Bethany. If our lord chose to go and sleep and Bethany who are you to question his decision. No you old ass our lord returned to Bethany

Because he had no man to pay for and in Jerusalem. Boner gratiot you’re the ass here what did our lord in Jerusalem. Would you say then that a horse who receives oats from his master to keep alive as the owner of the oats. You see you compare Christ to a horse.

Know you are the one who compares Christ to a Simon eichel prelate of your court vessel have done. Rarely and how many lawsuits as the holy see had to undertake to protect your property. The property of the church not ours we had it and use. It used to spend

To build beautiful churches with gold statues you hypocrites whited sepulchre as sinks of iniquity. You know well that charity not poverty is the principle of the perfect life. That is what your glutton Thomas said. Mind your words villain the manual called glutton is a Saint of the holy Roman church. St my foot

Canonized by John despite the franciscans your pope can create saints because he’s a heretic know or her easy ok. We’ve heard that one before words spoken by the bavarian puppet at sachsenhausen rehearsed by your uber Tina. Mind how you speak pig son of the whore of Babylon and others trumpets as well

You know uber tino wasn’t with the emperor that year he was right there and having your in the service of cardinal orsini and the pope were sending him as a messenger to aragon. I know i know he took his vow of poverty at the cardinal’s table as he now lives in

The richest Abbey of the peninsula. Who bettino if you weren’t there who prompted Louis to use your writings. Is it my fault if Louis reads my writings surely he cannot read yours you illiterate. I illiterate was your Francis illiterate he who spoke with geese s. Your blast fim.

You’re the blast femur you know the cake ritual. I have never seen such a thing and you know it. Yes you did you and your little friars when you slipped into the bed of Clare of montefalco. Make cuts track you.

I was inquisitor at that time and Claire had already died in the odor of sanctity. Claire gave off the odor of sanctity but you were sniffing another odor when you sang mountains to the nuns. Go on go on the wrath of god will reach you as it will reach your master

Who is given welcomed to heretics like that ostrogoth eckart and that English necromancer you call. Renew certain. Venerable brothers venerable brothers. Cardinal bertrand and the Abbot shouted. Terse. In which several rinus speaks to William of a strange book and William speaks to the envoys of a strange concept of temporal government.

The quarrel was still raging when one of the novices guarding the door came in passing through that confusion like someone walking across a field lashed by hail. He approached William to whisper that severin has wanted urgently to speak to him.

We went out into the narthex which was crowded with curious monks trying through the shouts and noise to catch something of what was going on inside. In the first rank we saw a mauro of Alexandria who welcomed us with his usual condescending sneer of commiseration at the foolishness of the universe.

To be sure since the rise of the mendicant orders christianity has become more virtuous he said. William brushed him aside with a certain roughness and headed for several rinus awaiting us in a corner. He was distressed and wanted to speak to us in private but

It was impossible to find a calm spot in that confusion. We thought to go outside but Michael of cheese aina looked out through the doorway of the chapter hall bidding William to come back in because he said the quarrel. Therein guards certainly came to the infirmary before he went to the boundary

He said. How do you know. Some monks approached their curiosity aroused by our confabulation. Several rinus his voice sank still lower as he looked around. You told me that that man must have had something with him well i found something in my laboratory among the other books. A book that is not mine

A strange book. Be it Williams said triumphantly bring it to me at once. I can’t separate us said. I’ll explain to you later. I have discovered. I believe i have discovered something interesting. You must come i i have to show you the book cautiously. He broke off.

We realized that silently as was his custom Jorge and appeared as if by magic at our side. His hands were extended before him as if not used to moving in that place he were trying to sense his direction. A normal person would not have been able to comprehend separateness as whispers

But we had learned some time before that Jorge’s hearing like that of all blind men was especially sharp. Still the old man seemed to have heard nothing. He moved in fact in the direction away from us. Touched one of the monks and asked him something.

The monk took him gently by the arm and led him outside. At that moment Michael reappeared again summoning William and my master made a decision. Please he said disavow rinus. Go back at once to the place from whence you came. Lock yourself inside and wait for me. You he said to me

Follow Jorge. Even if he did hear something i don’t believe he will have himself led to the infirmary in any case. You will tell me where he goes. As he started to go back into the hall he noticed as i also noticed

I morrow pushing his way through the jostling crowd in order to follow Jorge outside. Here William acted unwisely because now in a loud voice. From one end of the narthex to the other he said December rinus who was at the outer threshold. Make sure those papers are safe. Don’t go back to

Where they came from. Just as i was preparing to follow Jorge i saw the cellar or leaning against the jamb of the outside door. He had heard Williams warnings and was looking for my master to the herbalist his face tense with fear. He sorts of as going out and followed him.

On the threshold i was afraid of losing sight of Jorge who was about to be swallowed up by the fog but the other two heading in the opposite direction were also on the verge of vanishing into the broom. I calculated rapidly what i should do.

I had been ordered to follow the blind man but because it was feared he was going towards the infirmary. Instead his guide was taking him in another direction. He was crossing the cloister heading for the church or the inefficient. The seller on the contrary was shortly following the herbalist

And William was worried about what could happen in the laboratory. So i started following the two men wandering among other things where i morrow had gone unless he had come out for reasons quite removed from ours. Keeping a reasonable distance i did not lose sight of the celebrant who was slowing

His pace because he had realized i was following him. He couldn’t be sure the shadow at his heels was mine. As i couldn’t be sure the shadow whose heels i followed belonged to him. But as i had no doubts about him he had none about me.

Forcing him to keep an eye on me i prevented him from dogging several rinus too closely. And so when the door of the infirmary appeared in the mist it was closed. Several rinus had already gone inside heaven be thanked. The seller returned once again to look at me

While i stood motionless as a tree of the garden. Then he seemed to come to a decision and he moved toward the kitchen. I felt i had fulfilled my mission so i decided to go back and report. Perhaps i made a mistake.

If i had remained on guard many other misfortunes would have been averted but this i now know i did not know it then. I went back into the chapter hall that busy body it seemed to me did not represent a great danger. I approached William again and briefly gave him my report.

He nodded his approval then motioned me to be silent. The confusion was now abating the legates on both sides were exchanging the kiss of peace. The bishop of alba reappraised praised the faith the minor rides to Jerome exalted the charity of the preachers

All expressed the hope of a church no longer wracked by internal conflicts. Some praised the strength of one group some the temperance of another all invoked justice and counseled prudence. Never have i seen so many men so sincerely concerned with the triumph of the cardinal and theological virtues.

But now virgin del progetto was inviting William to expand the theses of the imperial theologians. William Rose reluctantly. He was realizing that the meeting was of no utility and in any case he was in a hurry to leave

For the mysterious book was now more urgent for him than the results of the meeting but it was clear he could not evade his duty. He began speaking then with many hers and o’s perhaps more than usual and more than proper as if to make it clear he was absolutely

Unsure about the things he was going to say. And he opened by affirming that he understood perfectly the viewpoint of those who had spoken before him and for that matter what others called the doctrine of the imperial theologians was no more more than some scattered observations that

Did not claim to be established articles of faith. He said further that. Given the immense goodness that god had displayed in creating the race of his sons loving them all without distinction. Recalling those pages of Genesis in which there was yet no mention of priests and kings.

Considering also that the lord had given to Adam into his descendants power over the things of this earth provided they obeyed the divine laws. We might infer that the lord also was not averse to the idea that in earthly things that people should be legislator and effective first cause of the law.

By the term people he said it would be best to signify all citizens but since among citizens children must be included as well as idiots malefactors and women. Perhaps it would be possible to arrive reasonably at a definition of the people as the better part of the citizens.

Though he himself at the moment did not consider it opportune to assert who actually belonged to that part. He cleared his throat apologize to his listeners remarking that the atmosphere was certainly very damp. And suggested that the way in which the people could express it’s will might be an elective general assembly.

He said that to him it seemed sensible for such an assembly to be empowered to interpret change or suspend the law. Because if the laws made by one man alone he could do harm through ignorance or malice and William added that it was unnecessary to remind those present of numerous recent instances.

I noticed that the listeners rather puzzled by his previous words could only assent to these last ones because each was obviously thinking of a different person and each considered very bad the person of whom he was thinking. Well then William continued.

If one man can make laws badly will not many men be better. Naturally he underlined he was speaking of earthly laws regarding the management of civil things. God had told Adam not to eat of the tree of good and evil and that was divine law

But then he had authorised or rather encouraged Adam to give things names and on that score he had allowed his terrestrial subject free reign. In fact though some in our times say that no minister and consequently array room. The book of Genesis is actually quite explicit on this point.

God brought all the animals unto Adam to see what he would call them and whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof. And though surely the first man had been clever enough to call in his adamic language everything and animal according to it’s nature

Nevertheless he was exercising a kind of sovereign right in imagining the name that in his opinion best correspond to that nature. Because in fact it is now known that men impose different names to designate concepts though only the concept signs of things are the same for all.

So that surely the word no men comes from nomos that is to say law since no mena are given by men add plenty to him. In other words by free and collective accord. The listeners did not dare contest this learned demonstration.

Whereby William concluded it is clear that legislation over the things of this earth and therefore over the things of the cities and kingdoms. Has nothing to do with the custody and administration of the divine word and unalienable privilege of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Unhappy indeed William said are the infidels

Who have no similar authority to interpret for them the divine word and all felt sorry for the infidels. But does this perhaps entitle us to say that the infidels do not have the tendency to make laws and administer their affairs through governance

Kings emperors or sultans caliphs or however you chose to call them. And could it be denied that many Roman emperors trajan for instance. Had exercised their temporal power or with wisdom. And who gave the pagans and the infidels this natural capacity to legislate and live in political communities.

Was it perhaps their false divinities who necessarily do not exist. Or do not exist necessarily however you understand the negation of this modality. Certainly not. It could only have been conferred by the god of hosts the god of Israel father of our lord Jesus Christ. Wondrous proof of the divine goodness that

Conferred the capacity for judging political things also on those who deny the authority of the Roman pontiff and do not profess the same sacred sweet and terrible mysteries of the Christian people. But what finer demonstration than this of the fact that temporal rule and secular jurisdiction

Have nothing to do with the church and with the lord Jesus Christ and were ordained by god beyond all ecclesiastical confirmation and even before our holy religion was founded. He coughed again but this time he was not alone. Many of those present were wriggling on their benches and clearing their throats.

I saw the cardinal run his tongue over his lips and make a gesture anxious but polite to urge William to get to the point. And William now grappled with what seemed to all even to those who did not share them the perhaps unpleasant conclusions of his incontrovertible reasoning.

William said that his deductions seemed to him supported by the very example of Christ. Who did not come into this world to command but to be subject to the conditions he found in the world. At least as far as the laws of Caesar were concerned.

I want the apostles to have command and dominion. And therefore it seemed a wise thing that the successors of the apostles should be relieved of any worldly or coercive power. If the pope the bishops and the priests were not subject to the worldly and coercive power of the prince.

The authority of the prints would be challenged and thus with it. An order would be challenged that as had been demonstrated previously had been decreed by god. To be sure some delicate cases must be considered William said. Like those of the heretics on whose heresy only the church

Custodian of the truth can pronounce. Though only the secular arm can act. When the church identifies some heretics. She must surely point them out to the prince who must rightly be informed of the conditions of his citizens. But what should the prince do with a heretic.

Condemned him in the name of that divine truth of which he is not the custodian. The prince can and must condemn the heretic if his action harms the community. That is if the heretic in declaring his heresy kills or impedes those who do not share it. But at that point

The power of the prince ends because no one on this earth can be forced through torture to follow the precepts of the gospel. Otherwise. What would become of that free will on the exercising of which each of us will be judged in the next world. The church can and must warn the heretic

That he is abandoning the community of the faithful. But she cannot judge him on earth and force him against his will. If Christ had wanted his priests to obtain coercive power he would have laid down specific precepts as Moses did in the ancient law. He did not do it

Therefore he did not wish it. Or does someone want to suggest the idea that he did wish it but lack the time or the ability to say so in three years of preaching. But it was right that he did not wish it because if he had wished it.

Then the pope would be able to impose his will on the king and christianity would no longer be a law of freedom but one of intolerable slavery. All this William added with a cheerful expression. Is no limitation of the powers of the supreme pontiff but rather an exaltation of his mission.

Because the servant of the servants of god is on this earth to serve and not to be served. And finally it would be odd to say the least if the pope had jurisdiction over the things of the Roman empire but not over the other kingdoms of the earth.

As every one knows what the pope says on divine questions is as valid for the subjects of the king of France as it is for those of the king of england. But it must be valid also for the subjects of the great Khan or the sultan of the info Adele’s.

Who are called infidels precisely because they are not faithful to this beautiful truth. And so if the pope were to assume he had temporal jurisdiction as pope only over the affairs of the empire. That might justify the suspicion that identifying temporal jurisdiction with the spiritual.

By that same token he would have no spirit ritual jurisdiction over not only the saracens or the tartars but also over the French and the English. Which would be a criminal blasphemy. And this was the reason my master concluded

Why it seemed right to him to suggest that the church of avignon was entering all mankind by asserting the right to approve or suspend him who had been elected emperor of the romans. The pope does not have greater rights over the empire than over other kingdoms

And since neither the king of France nor the sultan is subject to the pope’s approval. There seems to be no good reason why the emperor of the Germans and Italians should be subject to it. Such subjection is not a matter of divine right because scripture does not speak of it.

Nor is it sanctioned by the rights of peoples for the reasons already expounded. As for the connection with the dispute about poverty William added. His own humble opinions developed in the form of conversational suggestions by him and by some others. Such as marsalis padua and John of gendarme. Led to the following conclusions.

If the franciscans wanted to remain poor the pope could not and should not oppose so such a virtuous wish. To be sure if the hypothesis of Christ’s poverty were to be proved this would not only help the minor rights but also strengthen the idea that Jesus had not wished any earthly jurisdiction.

But that morning he William had heard very wise people assert that it could not be proved that Christ had been poor. Whence it seemed to him more fitting to reverse the demonstration. Since nobody had asserted or could assert that Jesus had sought any earthly jurisdiction for himself for his disciples.

This detachment of Jesus from temporal things seemed survey recent evidence to suggest the belief without sinning that Jesus on the contrary preferred poverty. William had spoken in such a meat tone he had expressed his certainties in such a hesitant way that none of those present was able to stand up and rebut.

This does not mean that all were convinced of what he had said. The ave knees were now writhing frowning and muttering comments among themselves and even the Abbot seemed unfavorably impressed by those words. As if he were thinking this was not the relationship he had desired between his order and the empire.

And as for the minor writes. Michael of cesena was puzzled Jerome aghast who bettino pensive. The silence was broken by cardinal del progetto still smiling and relaxed as he politely asked William whether he would go to avignon to say the same things to the lord pope. William asked the opinion of the cardinal

Who said that the pope had heard many debatable opinions uttered during his life and was the most loving father toward all his sons. But surely these proposes oceans would grieve him very much. Bernard g who until then had not opened his mouth now spoke up.

I would be very happy of brother William so skilled and eloquent and expounding his own ideas. Were to submit them to the judgment of the pontiff. You have convinced me my lord Bernard William said i will not come. Then addressing the cardinal. In an apologetic tone.

You know this flexion that is affecting my chess dissuades me from undertaking such a long journey in this season. Then why did you speak at such length the cardinal asked. To bear witness to the truth William said humbly the truth shall make us free. Ah no Jean de bon exploded at this point.

Here we are not talking about the truth that makes us free but about excessive freedom that wants to set itself up as truth. That is also possible William admitted sweetly. My intuition suddenly warned me that another tempest of hearts and tongues was about to burst far more furious than the earlier one

But nothing happened. While the bone was still speaking the captain of the archers entered and went to whisper something into Bernard’s ear. Bernard Rose abruptly and held up his hand to speak. Brothers he said it is possible this profitable discussion may be resumed but for the moment

An event of tremendous gravity obliges us to suspend our session with the Abbot’s permission. Something has happened there. He pointed vaguely outside then strolled through the hall and went out. Many followed him William among the first and i with him. My master looked at me and said.

I fear something has happened to several rinus. Sexed. In which severino is found murdered but the book that he had found is to be found no longer. We crossed the grounds with a rapid step in anguish. The captain of the archers led us toward the infirmary

And as we arrived there we glimpsed in the thick greyness a stirring of shadows. Monks and servants were rushing about archers were standing outside the door to prevent access. Those gods were sent by me to seek a man who could shed light on many mysteries. Bernard said. The brother herbalist

The Abbot asked dumbfounded. No you will see now Bernard said making his way inside. We entered severin as his laboratory and here a painful sight greeted our eyes. The unfortunate herbalist lay a corpse in a pool of blood his head bashed in. On every side

The shelves seemed to have been devastated by a storm. Pots bottles books documents lay all around in great disorder ruined. Beside the body was an armour Larry sphere at least twice the size of a man’s head. Have finally worked metal surmounted by a gold cross and set on a short decorated tripod.

On other occasions i had noticed it on the table to the left of the front door. At the other end of the room two archers were holding the seller or fast. Though he wriggled and proclaimed his innocence increasing his noise when he saw the Abbot enter. My lord he cried out.

Appearances are against me several rinus was already dead when i came in and they found me staring at this massacre speechless. The archers captain went over to Bernard and with his permission made a report in front of everyone.

The archers had been ordered to find the seller and arrest him and for over two hours they had searched for him throughout the Abbey. This i thought must have been the command Bernard had given before entering the hall. And the soldiers’

Foreigners in this place had probably pursued their search in the wrong places. Without realizing that the seller unaware of his fate was with the others in the narthex. The fog had also made their hunt more difficult. In any case from the captain’s words it emerged that remedial

After i left him went toward the kitchen where someone saw him and informed the archers who reached the deficient after remedial had lifted again. Missing them only by a moment. In the kitchen was Jorge who declared he had just finished speaking with the seller or.

The archers then explored the grounds in the direction of the gardens and they’re emerging from the mist like a ghost. They found old Ali nardo who seemed lost. It was ally nardo who said he had seen the celery a short while before going into the infirmary.

The archers went there and found the door open. Once inside they discovered sept. I’ve listened the seller are furiously rummaging over the shelves flinging everything on the floor as if he were hunting for something. It was easy to see what had happened the captain had concluded. Remedial had entered

And attack the herbalist and killed him and then was seeking the thing for which he had killed. An Archer picked up the arma Larry sphere from the floor and handed it to Bernard. The elegant architecture of brass and silver circles held together by a stronger

Frame of bronze rings grasped by the stem of the tripod. Had been brought down heavily on the victim’s skull and at the impact many of the finer circles had shattered or bent to one side. This side was the the one brought down on several rinus his head

As was revealed by traces of blood and even tufts of hair and horrible goblets of cerebral matter. William bent over separators to verify his death. The poor man’s eyes veiled by the streams of blood from his head were fixed. And i wondered if it wherever possible to read in the stiffened pupil

As it has been said in some cases the image of the murderer the last vestige of the victim’s perception. I saw that William sought the dead man’s hands to see if he had black stains on his fingers even though this time the cause of death was obviously quite different. But several.

Was wearing the same leather gloves with which i had occasionally seen him handling dangerous herbs. Lizards unfamiliar insects. Meanwhile Bernard yee was addressing the celeron. Remedial of origin a that is your name is it not. I had sent my men after you on the basis of other accusations and to confirm other suspicions.

Now i see that i acted properly although to my regret too slowly. My lord he said to the Abbot. I hold myself virtually responsible for this last crime. Because i have known since this morning that this man should be taken into custody

After i heard the revelations of that other rich arrested last night. But as you saw for yourself during the morning i was occupied with other duties and by men did their best. He spoke in a loud voice so that all those present could hear.

And the room had meanwhile filled up people crowding into every corner looking at the things scattered and destroyed pointing to the corpse and commenting in low voices on the crime. And as he spoke i glimpsed maliki in the little crowd grimly observing the scene.

The seller about to be dragged away also glimpsed him. He rested himself from the Archer’s grasp and flung himself on his brother grabbing him by the habit and speaking to him briefly and desperately. His face close to the other man’s until the archers seized him again.

But as he was being led off roughly he turned again toward maliki and shouted at him you swear and i swear. Maliki did not answer at once as if he was seeking the most suitable words. Then as the seller was being pulled across the threshold he said.

I will do nothing to harm you. William and i looked at each other wondering what was the meaning of this scene. Rennard had also observed it but did not appear upset by it. Rather he smiled at maliki. As if to approve his words and to seal with him a sinister bargain.

Then he announced that immediately after our meal the first court would meet in the chapter hall to open this investigation publicly. And he went out ordering the seller to be taken to the forges but not allowed to speak with Salvatore. At that moment we heard benaud calling us at our back.

I came in right after you he said in a whisper when the room was still half empty and maliki was not here. He must have entered afterward William said. No benaud insisted. I was near the door i saw the people come in i tell you maliki was already inside before. Before what.

Before the seller entered. I cannot swear it but i believe he came from behind that curtain. When there were already many of us in here. And he nodded toward an ample hanging that concealed the bed where several writers have usually made any one who had been given some medication lie down and rest.

Are you insinuating he killed several rinus and hid there when the seller came in William asked. Or else from behind the curtain he witnessed what happened out here why otherwise would the celebre have implored him not to harm him promising in return not to do him harm either. That is possible William said.

In any case there was a book here and it should still be here. Because both the seller and maliki went out empty handed. William knew from my report that Ben onu and at that moment he needed help. He went over to the Abbot who was sadly observing several rinus his corpse.

William asked him to make everyone leave because he wanted to examine the place more closely. The Abbot consented and then left not without giving William a skeptical look as if reproaching him for always arriving too late eight. Maliki tried to remain inventing various reasons or quite vague.

William pointed out that this was not the library and that here maliki could claim no rights. William was polite but inflexible and got his revenge for the time when maliki had not allowed him to examine finances his desk. When only three of us were left William cleared

The rubble and papers away from one of the tables and told me to hand him one after another the books and several rinus his collection. A small collection compared with the immense one of the labyrinth but still there were dozens and dozens of volumes of

Various sizes which had formerly stood neatly on the shelves and now lay in disorder or on the ground among other objects already disturbed by the seller’s frantic hands some even torn. As if he were seeking not a book but something that could be placed between the pages of a book.

Some had been ripped violently separated from their binding. To collect them rapidly ascertain their subject and pile them up on the table was no easy undertaking and everything had to be done in haste because the Abbot had given us little time. The monks had to come in and lay out several

Rinus his battered body and prepare it for burial. We also had to move about search under the tables behind the shelves in the cupboards to see whether anything it escaped the first inspection. William would not let benaud help me and allowed him only to stand guard at the door.

Despite the Abbot’s orders many were pressing to enter servants terrified by the news monks mourning their brother novices carrying clean clothes and basins of water to wash and and shroud the corpse. So we had to act fast. I grabbed the books and handed them to William

Who examined them and set them on the table. Then we realized it was a long job and we proceeded together i would pick up a book smooth it out if it was ruffled read it’s title and set it down. In many cases they were only scattered pages.

The plant easily retrace damnation that’s not it William said slamming the book on the table. They saw ruse her barroom i said and William snapped drop it we’re looking for a great book. This i asked. Showing him a work whose pages were covered with abstruse letters

And William said no that’s arabic idiot bacon was right the scholars first duty is to learn languages. But you don’t know arabic either i replied irked to which William answered. At least i understand when it is arabic. And i blushed because i could hear benno snickering behind my back.

There were many books even more notes scrolls with drawings of the heavenly vault catalogues of strange plants written on scattered pages probably by the dead man. We worked a long time exploring every corner of the laboratory wm with great coldness even shifted the corpse to see whether there was anything beneath it

And he rummaged inside the habit. Nothing. It has to be done he said severin has locked himself in here with a book the seller didn’t have it. Can he have hidden it inside his habit i asked. No the book i saw the other morning and have an anxious his desk was big

And we would have noticed. How is it bound i asked. I don’t know it was lying open and i saw it only for a few seconds just long enough to realize it was in Greek but i remember nothing else. Let us continue the celery didn’t take it nor i believe did maliki.

Absolutely not benaud confirmed when the celery grabbed him by the chest it was obvious he could have nothing under his scapular. Good. Or rather bad if the book is not in his room obviously someone else besides maliki and the seller. Had come in here before. A third person then who killed several rinus.

Too many people William said. But anyway i asked who could have known the book was here. Jorge for example if he overheard us. Yes i said but Jorge couldn’t have killed a strong man likes of a wryness and with such violence. No certainly not.

Beside you you saw him going toward the eat the fish him and the arches found him in the kitchen shortly before they found the celery. So he wouldn’t have had time to come here and then go back to the kitchen. Let me think with my own head

I said aiming at emulating my master. Ali nardo was moving around in the vicinity but he too can hardly stand and he couldn’t have overpowered several rinus. The celebre was here but the time between his leaving the kitchen and the arrival of the archers was so short

That i think it would have been difficult for him to make severin has opened the door to attack and kill him and then to make all this mess. Maliki could have come before them all. Or he hears us in the narthex he goes to the scriptorium to tell maliki that a book

From the library is in severin as his laboratory. Maliki comes here persuades severin is to open the door and kills him god knows why. But if he was looking for the book he should have recognized it without all this ransacking because he’s the librarian. So who’s left. Benno William said.

Benno shook her head in vigorous denial. No brother William you know i was consumed with curiosity. But if i had come in here and been able to leave with the book i would not be here now keeping your company. I would be examining my treasure somewhere else.

Then almost convincing argument William said smiling. However you don’t know what the book looks like either you could have killed and now you would be here trying to identify the book. Benaud blushed violently. I am not a murderer he protested. No one is until he commits his first crime William said philosophically.

Anyway the book is missing this is sufficient proof that you didn’t leave it here. Then he turned to contemplate the corpse. He seemed only at that point to take in his friend’s death. For several rinus he said. I had suspected even you and your poisons. And you were expecting some trick with poison

Otherwise you wouldn’t have worn those gloves. You feared the danger of the earth and instead it came to you from the heavenly vault. He picked up the sphere again observing it with attention. I wonder why they use this particular weapon. It was within reach. Perhaps. But there were other things. Pots gardening tools.

It is a fine example of the craft of metals and of astronomical science. It is ruined and. Good heavens he cried. What is it. And the third part of the sun was smitten and the third part of the moon and the third part of the stars he quoted.

I knew all too well the text of John the apostle. The fourth trumpet i exclaimed. In fact. First hail then blood. Then water and now the stars. If this is the case then everything must be reexamined the murderer did not strike at random he was following a plan.

But is it possible to imagine a mind so evil that he kills only when he can do so while following the dictates of the book of the apocalypse. What will happen with the fifth trumpet i asked terrified. I tried to recall. And i saw a star fallen from heaven unto the earth

And to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. Will somebody die by drowning in the well. The fifth trumpet also promises many other things Williams said. From the pit will come the smoke of a great furnace. Then locusts will come from it to torment

Mankind with a sting similar to a scorpions. And the shape of the locusts will resemble that of horses with gold crowns on their heads and lion’s teeth. A man could have various means at his disposal to carry out the words of the book. But we must not pursue fantasies

Let us try rather to remember what severin has said to us when he informed us he had found the book. You told him to bring it to you and he said he couldn’t. So he did and then we were interrupted. Why couldn’t he. A book can be carried.

And why did he put on gloves. Is there something in the books binding connected with the poison that killed baron garden been anxious. A mysterious trap or poisoned tip. A snake i see said. Why not a whale. Now we are indulging in fantasies again.

The poison as we have seen had to enter the mouth. Besides several rinus didn’t actually say he couldn’t carry the book he said he preferred to show it to me here. And then he put on his gloves. So we know this book must be handled with gloves.

And that goes for you too below if you find it as you hoped to and since you’re being so helpful you can help me further. Go up to the scriptorium again and keep an eye on maliki don’t let him out of your sight.

I will then have said and he went out happy at his mission it seemed to us. We could restrain the other monks no longer and the room was invaded. Meal time was now past and Bernard was probably assembling his tribunal in the chapter house. There is nothing more to be done here

William said. With the infirmary we abandoned my poor hypothesis and as we were crossing the vegetable garden i asked William whether he really trusted benno. Not entirely William said but we told him nothing he didn’t already know. And we have made him fear the book

And finally in setting him to watch maliki we are also setting maliki to watch him. And maliki is obviously looking for the book on his own. What did the celebre want then. We’ll soon know. Certainly he wants something that he wanted it quickly to avert some danger that was terrifying him.

This something must be known to maliki otherwise there would be no explanation of remedios desperate plea to him. Anyway the book has vanished. This is the most unlikely thing William said as we arrived at the chapter house. If it was there a sovereign has told us it was

Either it’s been taken away or is there still. And since it isn’t there someone has taken it away i concluded. It is also possible that the argument should proceed from another minor premise. Since everything confirms the fact that nobody can have taken it away. Then it should be there still

But it is not there. Just a moment we say it isn’t there because we didn’t find it. But perhaps we didn’t find it because we haven’t seen it where it was. But we looked everywhere. We looked but did not see or else saw but did not recognize. And so

How did severin as described that book to us what words did he use. He said he had found a book that was not one of his in Greek. Know now i remember he said a strange book. Severin us was a man of learning and for a man

Of learning a book in Greek is not strange. Even if that scholar doesn’t know Greek he would at least recognize the alphabet. And a scholar wouldn’t call a book in arabic strange i either even if he doesn’t know arabic. He broke off.

And what was an arabic book doing in severin as his laboratory. But why should he have called an arabic book strange. This is the problem. If he called it strange it was because it had an unusual appearance unusual at least for him. Who was a herbalist and not a librarian.

And in libraries it can happen at several ancient manuscripts are bound together collecting in one volume various and curious texts. One in Greek one in aramaic. And one in arabic i cried dazzled by this illumination. William roughly dragged me out of the narthex and sent me running toward the infirmary.

You tilt an animal you turnip you ignoramus. You looked only at the first pages and not that the rest. But master i gasped you’re the one who looked at the pages i showed you and said it was arabic and not Greek. That’s true and so that’s true i’m the animal now hurry run.

We went back to the laboratory but we had trouble entering because the novices were carrying out the corpse. Other curious visitors were roaming about the room. William rushed to the table and picked up the volumes seeking the fatal one flinging away one after another before the amazed eyes of those present.

Then opening and reopening them all again. Alas the arabic manuscript was no law anger there. I remembered it vaguely because of it’s old cover not strong quite worn with light metal bands. Who came in here after i left William asked the monk. The monk shrugged.

It was clear that everyone and no one had come in. We tried to consider the possibilities. Maliki it was possible. He knew what he wanted had perhaps spied on us had seen us go out empty handed and had come back sure of himself. Benno.

I remembered that when William and i had jibed at each other over the arabic text he had laughed. At the time i believed he was laughing at my ignorance but perhaps he had been laughing at Williams ingenuous. He knew very well the various guises in which an ancient manuscript could appear

And perhaps he had thought what we did not think immediately but should have thought. Namely that several highness knew no arabic and so it was odd that he should keep among his books one he was unable to read. Or was there a third person. William was deeply humiliated i tried to comfort him

I told him that for three days he had been looking for a text in Greek and it was natural in the course of his examination for him to discard all books not in Greek. And he answered that it is certainly human to make mistakes

But there are some human beings who make more than others and they are called fools and he was one of them and he wondered whether it was worth the effort to study in Paris and Oxford if one was then incapable of thinking that manuscripts are also bound in groups

Of fact even novices know except stupid ones like me and a pair of clowns like the two of us would be a great success at fairs and that was what we should do instead of trying to solve mysteries especially when we were up against people far more clever than we.

But there’s no use weeping he concluded. If maliki took it he has already replaced it in the library and we would find it only if we knew how to enter the finest Africa. If benno took it he must have assumed that sooner or later i would have the suspicion

I did have and would return to the laboratory. Or he wouldn’t have acted in such haste and so he must be hiding and the one place where he has not hidden surely is the one where we would look for him immediately. Namely his cell.

Therefore let’s go back to the chapter house and see if during the interrogation the sellers as anything useful. Because after all i still don’t see Bernard’s plan clearly. He was seeking his man before the death of several rinus and for other reasons. We went back to the chapter.

We would have done better to go to benno cell because as we were to learn later our young friend did not have such a high opinion of William and had not thought he would go back to the laboratory so quickly. So thinking he was not being sought from that quarter

He had gone straight to his cell to hide the book. But i will tell of this later. In the meantime dramatic and disturbing events took place. Enough to make anyone forget about the mysterious book. And although we did not forget it we were engaged by other urgent tasks

Connected with the mission that William after all was supposed to fulfill. Knowns. In which justice is meted out then there is the embarrassing impression that everyone is wrong. Bernard yee took his place at the center of the great walnut table in the chapter hall. Beside him a Dominican performed the function of notary

And two prelates of the papal legation sat flanking him as judges. The seller was standing before the table between two archers. The Abbot turned to William and whispered. I do not know whether this procedure is legitimate the lateran council of twelve fifteen decreed in it’s canon thirty seven that a

Person cannot be summoned to appear before judges who seat is more than two days march from his domicile. Here the situation is perhaps different. It is the judge who has come from a great distance but. The inquisitor is exempt from all normal jurisdiction William said

And does not have to follow the precepts of ordinary law. He enjoys a special privilege and does not even bound to hear lawyers. I looked at the cellar. Remedial was in wretched shape. He looked around like a frightened animal as if he recognized the movements and gestures of a liturgy he feared.

Now i know he was afraid for two reasons equally terrifying. One that he had been caught to all appearances in flagrant crime. The other. That the day before when Bernard had begun his inquiry collecting rumors and insinuations. Remedial had already been afraid his past would come to light.

And his alarm had grown when he saw them arrest Salvatore. If the hapless remedial was in the grip of his own fear Bernard gave for his part knew how to transform his victims fear and terror. He did not speak.

While all were now expecting him to begin the interrogation he kept his hands on the papers he had before him pretending to arrange them but absently. His gaze was really fixed on the accused and it was a gaze in which hypocritical indulgence.

As if to say never fear you are in the hands of a fraternal assembly that can only want your good. Mixed with with icy irony. As if to say you do not yet know what your good is and i will shortly tell you. And merciless severity

As if to say but in any case i am your judge here and you are in my power. All things that the seller already knew but which the judges silence and delay serve to make him feel more deeply so that. As he became more and more humiliated.

His uneasiness would be transformed into desperation instead of relaxation and he would belong entirely to the judge. Soft wax in his hands. Finally Bernard broke the silence. He uttered some ritual formulas told the judges they would now proceed to the interrogation of the defendant with regard to two equally odious crimes.

One of which was obvious to all but less deplorable than the other because the defendant had been surprised in the act of murder when he was actually being sought for the crime of heresy. Who are you he asked. Remedial of origin a. I was born fifty two years ago

And while still a boy i entered the convent of the minor rights and virginie. And how does it happen that today you are found in the order of st Benedict. Years ago when the pope issued the bull Santa romana because i was afraid of being infected by the heresy of the fatty jelly

Though i had never shared their notions. I thought it was better for my sinning soul to escape an atmosphere filled with seductions and i applied and was received among the monks of this Abbey where for more than eight years i have served as celery. You escaped the seductions of heresy. Bernard marked.

Or rather you escaped the investigation of those who had determined to discover the heresy and uprooted. And the good Clooney ag monks believed they were performing an act of charity and receiving you and those like you. But changing habit is not enough to erase from the soul the evil of heretical depravity

And so we are here now to find out what lurks in the recesses of your in penitent soul and what you did before arriving at this holy place. My soul is innocent and i do not know what you mean when you speak of heretical depravity. The seller said cautiously. You’ll see

Bernard cried addressing the other judges. They’re all alike. When one of them is arrested he faces judgment as if his conscience were at peace and without remorse. And they do not realize this is the most obvious as a sign of their guilt because a righteous man on trial is uneasy.

Asked him whether he knows the reason why i had ordered his arrest. Do you know a dreamy geo. My lord the seller replied. I would be happy to learn it from your lips. I was surprised because it seemed to me the seller was answering the ritual questions with equally ritual words.

As if he were well versed in the rules of the investigation and its pitfalls and had long been trained to face such an eventuality. Their Bernard cried. The typical reply of the impairment and heretic. They covered trails like foxes and it is very difficult to catch them out

Because their beliefs Grant them the right to lie in order to evade due punishment. They recur to torturous answers trying to track the inquisitor who already has to endure contact with such loathsome people. So then Remy Joe. You have never had anything to do with the so

Called frutti jelly or friars of the poor life or the big gods. I experienced the vicissitudes of the minor rights when there was long debate about poverty that i have never belonged to the sect of the gods. You see Bernard said he denies ever having been at the guard because the

Guards though they share the heresy of the frantic jelly. Consider the latter a dead branch of the franciscan order and consider themselves more pure and perfect. But much of the behavior of one group is like that of the others. Can you deny remedial that you have been seen in church

Huddled down with your face against the wall or prostrate with your hood over your head instead of kneeling with folded hands like other men. Also in the order of st Benedict the monks prostrate themselves at the proper times. I am not asking what you did at the proper times

But at the improper ones. So do not deny that you assumed one posture the other typical of the gods. But you are not to be guide you say. Tell me then what do you believe. My lord i believe everything a good Christian should. A holy reply and what does a good Christian believe.

What the holy church teaches. And which holy church. The church that is so considered by those believers who call themselves perfect. The pseudo apostles. The heretical frat jelly or the church they compare to the whore of Babylon in which all of us devoutly believe. My lord the seller said the Wilder.

Tell me which you believe is the true church. I believe it is the Roman church one holy and apostolic governed by the pope and his bishops. So i believe the seller said. Admirable shrewdness the inquisitor cried. Admirable cleverness the deep do. You all hurt him

He means to say he believes that i believe in this church and he evades the requirement of saying what he believes in. But we know well these weasel tricks. That has come to the point. Do you believe that the sacraments were in instituted by our lord.

That to do true penance you must confess to the servants of god. That the Roman church has the power to loosen and to bind on this earth that which will be bound and loosened in heaven. Should i not believe that. I did not ask will should believe but what you do believe.

I believe everything that you and the other good doctors commend me to believe. The frightened sellers said. Ah. But are not the good doctors you mentioned perhaps those who command your sect. Is this what you meant when you spoke of the good doctors.

Are these perverse liars the menu follow in recognizing your articles of faith. You imply that if i believe what they believe then you will believe me. Otherwise you will believe only them am. I i did not say that my lord the celery stammered. You are making me say it. I believe you

If you teach me what is good. Oh what impudence Bernard shouted slamming his fist on the table. You repeat from memory with grim obstinacy the formula they teach in your sect. You say you will believe me only if i preach what your sect considers good. Thus the pseudo apostles have always answered and

Thus you answer now perhaps without realizing it. Because f from your lips again the words emerged that you were once trained for deceiving inquisitors. And so you are accusing yourself with your own words and i would fall into your trap only if i had not had a long experience of inquisition.

But let us come to the real question perverse man. Have you ever heard of Gerardo segre Eli of parma. I have heard him spoken of. The seller said. Turning pale if one could still speak of pallor on that destroyed face. Have you ever heard a fragile chino of novara.

I have heard him spoken of. Have you ever seen him in person and had conversations with him. The seller or remained silent for a few moments as if to Gauge how far he should go in telling a part of the truth. Then he made up his mind and said in a faint voice.

I have seen him and spoken with him. Louder. Bernard shouted. Let a word of truth finally be heard escaping your lips. When did you speak with him. My lord the seller said. I was a monk in a convent near novara window chinos people gathered in those parts

And they even went past my convent and at first no one knew clearly who they were. Your lie. How could a franciscan of origin a be in a convent in the navarra region. You were not in a convent. You we’re already a member of a band different

Italy roaming around those lands and living on arms and then you joined the dark Chileans. How can you assert that sir. The seller asked trembling. I will tell you how i can indeed i must deserted. Bernard said and he ordered Salvatore to be brought in. The site of the rent she should certainly

Spent the night under his own interrogation. Not public and more severe than this one moved me to pity. Salvatore his face as i have said was horrible normally but that morning it was more bestial than ever. And though it showed no signs of violence the way his Jane’s body moved

The limbs disjointed almost incapable of walking. The way he was dragged by the arches like a monkey tied to a rope revealed very clearly how his ghastly questioning must have proceeded. But not as tortured him i murmured to William. Not at all William answered. An inquisitor never tortures.

The custody of the defendant’s body is always entrusted to the secular arm. But it’s the same thing i said. Not in the least. It isn’t the same thing for the inquisitor whose hands remain clean. Or for the accused to when the inquisitor arrives.

Suddenly find support in him an easing of his sufferings and so he opens his heart. I looked at my master. Your testing i said aghast. Do these same things to just about. William replied. Bernard was now questioning Salvatore and my pen cannot transcribe the man’s broken words.

If it were possible more babyliss than ever. As he answered unmanned reduced to the state of a baboon. While all understood him only with difficulty. Guided by Bernard who asked the questions in such a way that he could only reply yes or no. Salvatore was unable to tell any lies.

And what Salvatore said my reader can easily imagine. He told or confirmed that he had told during the night. A part of that story i had already pieced together. His wanderings of ratty jello Shepherd and pseudo apostle. And how in the days of fragile chino he met remedial among little Chileans

And escaped with him following the battle of monte rebello. Taking refuge after various ups and downs in the casale convent. Further he added that the hurries yocto chino near defeat and capture had entrusted to remedial certain letters to be carried he did not know where or to whom.

And remedial always carried those letters with him never daring to deliver them and on his arrival at the Abbey afraid of keeping them on his person but not wanting to destroy them he entrusted them to the library Aryan yes to maliki who’s to hide them somewhere in the recesses of the division.

A Salvatore spoke the celery was looking at him with hatred and at a certain point he could not restrain himself from shouting snake. Lucius monkey i was your father friend shield and this is how you repay me. Salvatore looked at his protector now in need of protection and answered with an effort.

Lord dreamy tio. While i could be i was your man and you are to me. Delectable. But you know the chief constable’s family. Queenan habit kabalu invited to compete a. Mad man remedios shouted at him again. Are you hoping to save yourself. You too will die as a heretic you know.

Say that you spoke under torture say you invented it all. What do i lord lord what are these Horatio or gold but are any. Gut says he lay on nice day. I dunno these day sparrow nice day. Cheer can cheesy. I am not all molitor atos. I sinned with no militia

And signor Bernardo my knee. In DC Moore knows it. And i am hoping in his. The. Year. Enorme in a padre a fellow at speedy de santis. We shall be indulgent insofar as our office allows the inquisitor said. And we shall consider with paternal benevolence the

Goodwill with which you have opened your spirit. Go now go and meditate further in your cell and trust in the mercy of the lord. Now we must debate a question of quite different import. So then remedial. You are carrying with you some letters from del chino and you gave them to your

Brother monk who is responsible for the library. That is not true not true the seller or cried as if such a defense could still be effective. And rightly Bernard interrupted him. But you are not the one who must confirm this it is maliki of hildesheim.

He had the librarian called but maliki was not among those present. I knew he was either in the scriptorium or near the infirmary seeking benaud in the book. They went to fetch him and when he appeared distraught. Trying to look no one in the face William muttered with dismay.

And now benno is free to do what he pleases. But he was mistaken. Because i saw banjos face peep up over the shoulders of the other monks crowding around the door of the hall to follow the interrogation. I pointed him out to William. We thought that bentos curiosity about what was happening

Was even stronger than his curiosity about the book. Later we learned that by then he had already concluded an ignoble bargain of his own. Maliki appeared before the judges his eyes never meeting those of the celery. Maliki Bernard said. This morning after Salvatore his confession during the night.

I asked you whether you had received from the defendant here present any letters. Maliki the seller or cried you swore you would do nothing to harm me. Maliki shifted slightly towards the defendant to whom his back was turned and said in a low voice which i could barely hear.

I did not swear falsely. If i could have done anything to harm you it was done already. The letters were handed over to lord Bernard this morning before you killed several rinus. But you know you must know. I didn’t kill a rinus. You know because you were there before me. I. Maliki asked.

I went in there after they discovered you. Be that as it may. Bernard interrupted. What were you looking for in several highnesses laboratory remedial. The seller returned to William with dazed eyes then looked at maliki then at barnard again. But this morning i

I heard brother William here present tells of arenas to guard certain papers. And since last night. Since Salvatore was captured i have been afraid those letters. Then you’ll know something about those letters. Bernard cried triumphantly. The seller at this point was trapped. He was caught between two nas the cities

To clear himself of the accusation of heresy and to dispel the suspicion of murder. He must have decided to face the second accusation instinctively because by now he was acting by no rule and without counsel. I will talk about the letters later i will explain.

I will tell how they came into my possession. But let me tell what happened this morning. I thought there would be talk of those letters when i saw Salvatore fall into the hands of lord barnard. For years the memory of those letters has been tormenting my heart.

Then when i heard William and several rinus speaking of some papers. I cannot say. Overcome with fear i thought maliki had got rid of them and given them to serve a rinus. I wanted to destroy them and so i went to several rinus. The door was open and separateness was already dead.

I started searching through his things for the letters i i was just afraid. William whispered into my ear. Poor fool fearing one danger he has plunged headlong into another. Let us assume that you are telling almost. I said almost the truth. Bernard intervened.

You thought severin has had the letters and you looked for them in his laboratory. And why did you think he had them. Why did you first kill the other brothers. Did you perhaps think those letters had for some time been passing through many hands.

Is it perhaps customary in this Abbey to gather relics of burned heretics. I saw the Abbot start. Nothing could be more insidious than an accusation of collecting relics of heretics and Bernard was very sly and mixing the murders with heresy and everything with the life of the Abbey.

I was interrupted in my reflections by the seller who was shouting that he had nothing to do with the other crimes. Bernard indulge gently calmed him. This for the moment was not the question they were discussing remedial was being interrogated for a crime of heresy and he should not attempt

And hear Bernard’s voice became stern to draw attention away from his heretical past by speaking of several rinus or trying to cast suspicion on maliki. So he should therefore return to the letters. Maliki of hildesheim he said addressing the witness. You are not here as a defendant.

This morning you answered my questions and my request with no attempt to hide anything. Now you will repeat here what you said to me this morning and you will have nothing to fear. I repeat what i said this morning. Maliki said. A short time after Remy Joe arrived up here

He began to take charge of the kitchen and we met frequently for reasons connected with our duties. As librarian i am charged with shutting up the whole eat efficient at night and therefore also the kitchen. I have no reason to deny that we became close friends

Nor had i any reason to harbor suspicions of this man. He told me that he had with him some documents of a secret nature entrusted to him in confession which should not fall into profane hands and which he dared not keep himself.

Since i was in charge of the only part of the monastery forbidden to all the others. He asked me to keep those pay papers far from any curious gaze. And i consented never suspecting the documents were of a heretical nature. Nor did i even read them as i placed them.

I placed them in the most inaccessible of the secret rooms of the library and after that i forgot this matter until this morning when the lord inquisitor mentioned the papers to me and then i fetched them and handed them over to him. The Abbot frowning took the floor.

Why did you not inform me of this agreement of yours with the celera. The library is not intended to house things belonging to the months. The Abbot had made it clear that the Abbey had no connection with his business. My lord. Maliki answered confused. It seemed to me a thing of scarce importance.

I sinned without malice. Of course of course Bernard said in a cordial tone. We are all convinced the librarian acted in good faith and his frankness in collaborating with this court is proof. I fraternity beg your magnificence not to chastise him for this imprudent act of the past. We believe maliki

And we ask him only to confirm now under oath. It i will now show him or those he gave me this morning and are those that remedial a virgin a consigned to him years ago after his arrival at the Abbey. He displayed two parchments among the papers lying on the table.

Maliki looked at them and said in a firm voice. I swear by god the father almighty by the most holy virgin and by all the saints that so it is and so it was. That is enough for me Bernard said. You may go maliki of hildesheim.

Just before maliki reached the door his head bowed a voice was heard from the curious crowd packed at the rear of the hall. You hit his letters and he showed you the novices acids in the kitchen. There was some scattered laughter and maliki hurried out pushing others aside left and right.

I could have sworn the voice was i morrow’s but the words had been shouted in falsetto. The Abbot his face purple shouted for silence and threatened terrible punishments for all commanding the monks to clear the hall. Bernard smiled treacherously. Cardinal bertrand at one side of the hall been to

The ear of Jean de no and said something to him. The other the man reacted by covering his mouth with his hand and bowing his head as if he were coughing. William said to me. The celebre was not only a cardinal sinner for his own purposes. He also acted as a procurer.

But Bernard cares nothing about that except that it embarrasses abo the imperial mediator. He was interrupted by Bernard who now spoke straight to him. I would also be interested to know from you brother William what papers you were talking about this morning with several rinus when the seller overheard you and misunderstood.

William returned his gaze. He did misunderstand me in fact we were referring to a copy of the treatise on canine hydrophobia by a u b a rule howe. A remarkably area diet book that you must surely know of by reputation. Which must often have been of great use to you.

Hydrophobia or Europe says may be recognized by twenty five evident signs. Bernard who belonged to the order of the Dominicans the Dominique carnies the lord’s dogs did not consider it opportune to start another battle. So the matters were extraneous to the case under discussion he said rapidly. And the trial continued.

That has come back to you brother remedial minor right far more dangerous than a hydrophobic dog. If brother William in these past few days had paid more attention to the drool of heretics than to that of dogs. Perhaps he would also have discovered what a viper was nesting in the Abbey.

Let us go back to these letters. Now we know for certain that they were in your hands and that you took care to hide them as if they were a most poisonous thing. And that you actually killed. With a gesture he forestalled an attempted denial. And of the killing we will speak later.

That you killed i was saying so that i would never have them. So you’ll recognize these papers as your possessions. The seller did not answer but his silence was sufficiently eloquent. So Bernard insisted. And what are these papers. They are two pages written in the hand of the hurries the actual chino

A few days before his capture. He entrusted them to a disciple who would take them to others of his sect still scattered about Italy. I could read you everything said in them. How do chino fearing his imminent end interests a message of hope. He says to his brethren. In the devil.

He consoles them and though the dates he announces here do not coincide with those of his previous letters. When for the year thirteen o five he promised the complete destruction of all priests at the hand of the emperor Frederick. Still he declares this destruction was not far off.

Once again the hurries eoc was lying because twenty and more years have gone by since that day and none of his sinful predictions has come true. But it is not the ridiculous presumption of these prophecies that we must discuss but. Rather the fact that remedial was their bearer.

Can you still deny heretical and in penitent monk that you had traffic and cohabitation with the sect of the pseudo apostles. The seller at this point could deny no longer. My lord he said. My youth was filled with the diarist errors. When i learned of the preaching of the chino

Already seduced as i was by the friars of the poor life. I believed in his words and i joined his band. Yes it is true i was with them in the regions of brush and bergamot. I was with them at como and in the bus Asia.

And with them i took refuge on bald mountain and in the rasa valley and finally on monte rebello. But i never took part in any evil deed and when they began their sacking and their violence i still maintained within me the spirit of meekness that was the quality of the sons of Francis.

And on monty rebelo itself i told him chino i no longer felt capable of participating in their battle and he gave me permission to leave because he said he did not want cowards with him. And he asked me only to take those letters for him to Bologna. To whom cardinal bertrand asked.

To some sectarian of his whose names i believe i can remember and when i remember them i will tell them to you my lord. Remedial hastily affirmed. And he uttered the names of some men that cardinal bertrand seemed to know because he smiled with a contented look.

Exchanging a nod of approval with Bernard. Very well Bernard said and he made a note of those names. Then he asked remedial. And why are you now handing your friends over to us. They are not friends of mine my lord and the proof is that i never delivered the letters.

Indeed i went further. And i will say it now after having tried to forget it for so many years. In order to leave that place without being seized by the bishop of their jellies army which was awaiting us on the plane. I managed to get in touch with some of his men.

And in exchange for a safe conduct i told them that pass images that were good for attacking do chinos fortifications. So that the success of the churches troops was in part due to my collaboration. Very interesting this tells us that you are not only a heretic but also a coward and a traitor.

Which does not alter your situation. Just as today you tried to save yourself by accusing maliki who had done you a favor. So then to save yourself you handed your companions in sin over to the forces of law. But you betrayed their bodies never their teachings and you kept those letters as

Relics hoping one day to have the courage and the opportunity without running any risks to deliver them to win again the favor of the pseudo apostles. No my lord no. The seller said covered with sweat his hands shaking. Low i swear to you that. An oath. Bernard said.

Here is another proof of your guile. You’ll want to swear because you know that i know how valencian heretics are prepared to use any duplicity and even to suffer death rather than swear. And if fear overcomes them they pretend to swear and mutter false oaths.

But i am well aware you do not belong to the sect of the poor of Leon you weaken fox and you are trying to convince me you are not what you are not. So that i will not say you are what you are. You swear do you.

Use were hoping to be absorbed but i tell you this. A single oath is not enough for me. I can require one to three one hundred. As many as i choose. I know very well that you will pseudo apostles Grant dispensations to those who swear false oaths rather than betray the sect.

And so every olds will be further proof of your guilt. But what must i do then. The seller is shouted falling to his knees. Do not prostrate yourself like a big god. You must do nothing. At this point only i know what must be done. Bernard said with a terrible smile.

You must only confess. And you will be damned and condemned if you confess and damned and condemned if you do not confess because you will be punished as a perjurer. So confess then if only to shorten this most painful interrogation which distresses our consciences and our sense of meekness and compassion.

But what must i confess. Two orders of sins. That you were in the sect of dolci know that you shared it’s heretical notions and it’s actions and it’s offensive to the dignity of the bishops in the city magistrates. That you in penitents continue in those lies and delusions.

Even though the hurries iarc is dead and the sect has been dispersed. Though not entirely extirpated and destroyed. And that corrupted in your innermost spirit by the practices learned among the foul sect you are guilty of the disorders against god and man perpetrated in this Abbey for

Reasons that still elude me but which need not even be totally clarified since it has been luminous Lee demonstrated as we are doing. That the heresy of those who preached and preach poverty against the teachings of the lord pope and his bulls. Can only lead to criminal act.

This is what the faithful must learn and this will be enough for me. Confess. What Bernard wanted was clear. Without the slightest interest in knowing who had killed the other monks. He wanted only to show that remedios 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 perugia and the ideas of the fronted jelly and the dolci unions 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 at 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 center sheree had chosen to assemble. As for the celery by now he no longer knew of what

Crime he might still tried to proclaim his innocence. But perhaps at that moment he was incapable of any calculations. 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.

After a life of uncertainties enthusiasms and disappointments cowardice and betrayal. Faced with the intellect ability 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 Don chino and i shared in his crimes his licence. 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 dolci Indians the witch Margaret and her companions. Do you admit being with them near trevorrow where 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 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 believe those things and i did those things. And you were present when they captured some followers of the bishops and stabbed some to death in prison and they cut off the arm and the hand of a woman with child.

Leaving her than to give birth to a baby who immediately die then baptized. And you were with them when they set fire and razed to the ground the villages of marceau trevorrow casella and click here and many other localities in the zone of creeper choreo and many houses in mortal Leonel and quirino

And they burned the church in trevorrow after befalling the sacred images tearing tombstones from the altars. Breaking an arm of the statue of the ver virgin looting the chalices and vessels and books destroying the spire shattering the bells seating all the vessels of the confort entity in 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 rain. The seller 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 corrado segre Eli as a martyr. That you have denied all power to the Roman church

And declared that neither the pope nor any authority could ordain for your life different from the one your people lead. That no one had the right to excommunicate you. That since the time of st Sylvester all the prelates of the church had been provocateurs and seducers. Except Peter of Moroni.

That laymen are not required to pay ties to priests who do not practice a condition of absolute perfection and poverty as the first apostles practiced. The tides therefore should be paid to your sect alone who are the only apostles and poppers of Christ.

The trooper re to god in a stable or in a consecrated churches the same thing. You also confessed that you went through villages and seduced people crying penitentiary agitate. That you treacherously sang the Saudi Regina to draw crowds and you’ll pass yourselves off as penitents

Leading a perfect life before the eyes of the world and then allowed yourselves every liason and every last foreigners because you did not believe in the sacrament of matrimony or in any other sacrament and deeming yourselves purer than any one else you could allow yourselves every filthiness and 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 live on arms 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’re 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 legitimate 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. Perhaps we were driven by an overweening desire for justice. A man can sin also through overweening love of god.

Through superabundance of perfection. We were the true spiritual congregation sent by the lord and destined for the glory of the last days. We sought our reward in paradise hastening the time of your destruction and. We alone were the apostles of Christ all the others had betrayed him

And corrado sega rally had been a divine plant plant the day he perlu lands in ruddy chief the day. 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’re 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 touch the hastening and it was worth turning the waters of the current us go read that they had stabbed elo. That was our own blood too we did not spare ourselves our blood and your blood much of it at once immediately.

The times of the genos 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 terrified. There must be some other kind as well William said but however it is it always frightens me. What terrifies you most impurity i asked. Haste. William answered. Enough enough Bernard was saying now. We sought a confession from you not a summons to massacre. Very well.

I’d 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 seller or stop 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. Oh lamb oh model of meekness. You have heard him.

He once had his hands steeped in blood and now he is innocent. Perhaps we were mistaken Remy joa the ragini 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 remedial that i may console you for the accusations that evil men have brought against you.

And as remedial 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. Asked 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 him. Only shown. And then. On the fourth day proceed. Justice is not inspired by haste as the pseudo apostles believe and the justice of god has centuries at it’s disposal. Proceed slowly

And by degrees and above all remember what has been said again and again. Avoid mutilations and the rich sc of death. One of the benefits this procedure grants the criminal is precisely the death be savoured and expected. But it must not come before confession is full and voluntary and purifying.

The archers bent to lift the seller but he planted his feet on the ground and put up resistance indicating he wanted to speak. Given leave he spoke but the words could hardly come from his mouth and his speech was like a drunkard’s mumbling and there was something obscene about it.

Only gradually did he regain that kind of savage energy that had marked his confession a moment before. No my lord. No not torture. I am a cowardly man. I betrayed then. I denied for eleven years in this monastery my past faith collecting tithes from vine dressers and peasants inspecting stables and styes

So that they would flourish and enrich the Abbot. I have collaborated readily in the management of this isthe date of the antichrist. And i was well off i had forgotten my days of revolt i wallowed in the pleasures of the palate and in others as well. I am a coward.

Today i sold my former brothers of Bologna then i sold the chino and as a coward disguised as one of the men of the crusade i witnessed the capture of do chino and Margaret. Went on holy Saturday they were taken in the castle of mugello. I wandered around virtually for three months until

Pope clement’s letter arrived with a death sentence. And i saw him. Two pieces before the chinos eyes and she screamed disemboweled as she was poor body that i too had touched one night. And as her lacerated body was burning they fell under chino and pulled off his nose

And his testicles with burning tongues and it is not true what they said afterward. That he did not utter even a mon. The chino was tall and strong he had a great devil’s beard and red hair that fell in curls to his shoulder blades he was handsome and powerful when he led us

In his broad brimmed hat with a plume with his sword girded over his habit. The chino made men fear and women cry out with pleasure. But when they tortured him he too cried in pain like a woman like a cat

He was bleeding from all his wounds as they carried him from one corner to another and they continued to wound him slightly to show how long an emissary of the devil could live and he wanted to die he asked them to finish him but he died too late after he reached the pyre

And was only a massive bleeding flesh. I followed him and i congratulated myself on having escaped that trial i was proud of my cleverness. And that rogue Salvatore was with me and he said to me how wise we were brother remedial to act like sensible men there is nothing nastier than torture.

I would have forsworn a thousand religions that day. And for years many years i have told myself how base i was and how happy i was to be base. And yet i was always hoping that i could demonstrate to myself that i was not such a coward.

Today you have given me the strength lord Bernard. You have been for me what the pagan emperors were for the most cowardly of the martyrs. You have given me the courage to confess what i believe in my soul as my body falls away from it.

But do not demand too much courage of me. More than this mortal frame can bear. No. Not torture. I will say whatever you want. Better the stake at once. You die of suffocation before you burn. Not torture like latinos know. You want a corpse and to have it

You need me to assume the guilt for other corpses. I will be a corpse soon in any case. And so i will give you what you want. I killed a del mo of otranto out of hatred for his youth and for his wit and taunting monsters like me old fat squat and ignorant.

I killed finances of ceramic because he was too learned and read books i did not understand. I killed baron gar of arundel out of hatred of his library i who study theology by clubbing priests that were too fat. I killed several rinus of zant vandal. Why. Because he gathered herbs

I who was on monty rebelo where we eat herbs and grasses without wondering about their properties. In truth i could also kill the others including our rabbit. With a pauper with the empire he still belongs to my enemies and I’ve always hated him even when he fed me because i fed him.

Is that enough for you. I know you also want to know how i killed all those people why i killed them or let me see by calling up the infernal powers. With the help of a thousand legions brought under my command by the art that Salvatore taught me

To kill someone it is not necessary to strike the devil does it for you if you know how to command the death whoa. He gave the onlookers a sly glance laughing. And how could you command the devil. Bernard insisted taking this delirium as a legitimate confession. You’ll yourself know

It is impossible to traffic for so many years with the possessed and not wear their habit. You yourself know butcher of apostles. You take a black cat isn’t that it that does not have even one white hair you know this and you bind his four paws

And then you take him at midnight to a crossroads and you cry in a loud voice oh great Lucifer emperor of hell i call you and i introduce you into the body of my enemy just as i now hold prisoner this cat. And if he will bring my enemy to death

Then the following night at midnight in the same place i will offer you this cat in sacrifice and you will do what i command of you by the powers of the magic i now exercise according to the secret book. Of st cyprian

In the name of all the captains of the great legions of hell. Audra milk. Allaster and azazel to whom now i pray with all their brothers. His lip trembled his eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets and he began to pray. Or rather he seemed to be praying

But he addressed his implications to all the chiefs of the infernal legions. I’ll be Gore packer pro nobis. Amon miserere in obese. Somehow liberal no sir bonar. Be legally liaison. For galore in groups you on m mayor min ten day. Arbor im dumb namur domino. XY both our new mayor not barriers. Leonhard

Asparagus in a spare multi tool at in queen a bore. Stop stop. Every one in the hall cried making the sign of the cross. Oh lord have mercy on us all. The seller was now silent. When he had uttered the names of all these devils he fell face down

A whitish saliva drooling from his twisted mouth and the clenched rows of his teeth. His hands though tormented by his chains opened and closed convulsively his feet kicked the air and irregular fit. See me gripped by a trembling power William put his hand

On my head and clasped me almost at the nape pressing it. Which can’t me again. You see he said to me. Under torture or the threat of torture a man says not only what he has done but what he would have liked to do even if he didn’t know it.

Remedial now once death with all his soul. The archers led the seller away still in convulsions. Bernard gathered his papers then he looked hard at those present. Motionless but in great agitation. The interrogation is over. The accused guilty by his own confession will be taken to

Having your where the final trial will be held. As a scrupulous safeguard of truth and justice and only after that formal trial will he be burned. He no longer belongs to you abo nor does he belong any longer to me who am only the humble instrument of the truth.

The fulfillment of justice will take place elsewhere. The Shepherds have done their duty now the dogs must separate the infected sheep from the flock and purify it with fire. The wretched episode that has seen this man commit such ferocious crimes is ended. Now may the Abbey live in peace. But the world.

Here he raised his voice and addressed the group of envoys. The world has still not found peace. The world is riven by heresy which finds refuge even in the halls of imperial palaces. Let my brothers remember this. A tingle and the ugly binds don’t chinos perverse sectarian

To the honored masters of the chapter approved yet. We must not forget. In the eyes of god the ravings of the rich we have just handed over to justice are no different from those of the masters who feast at the table of the excommunicated German of Bavaria. The source of the heretics wickedness

Springs from many preaching even respected still unpunished. 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 practice his heresy is not the only kind of heretic. Heresies supporters can be distinguished by five indicators. First. 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 declared the heretics have been unjustly condemned even when their guilt has been proved. Forth those who look askance and criticize those who persecute heretics and preach against them successfully and this can be discovered from the eyes

Knows the expression they tried to conceal showing hatred toward those for whom they feel bitterness and love toward those whose misfortune so go grieves them. The fifth sign finally is the fact that they collect the charred bones of burn 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 still agile in their perverse way. As he spoke he was looking at bettino.

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 you bettino takes flight then o begins to observe the laws and William make 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 albertina. Together we all went out into the open to confer and the cloister under cover of the fog. Which showed no sign of thinning out indeed it was made even thicker by the shadows. I don’t think it is necessary to comment on what has happened

William said. Bernard has defeated us. Don’t ask me whether that imbecile does Cheney and 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 having your Michael in this meeting

Hasn’t given you the guarantees we were looking for. On the contrary it has given you an idea how every word of yours up there could be distorted. Whence we must reduce 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. While that is not what i want and i realized that the decisions of the Bruges chapter have been used by the imperial theologians beyond our intentions.

I want the franciscan order to be accepted by the pope with it’s ideal of poverty. The pope must understand that unless the order confirms the ideal of poverty. It will never be possible for it to recover the heretical offshoot.

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. Uber tino 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 the consistory in which he called Michael a madman. A wreck atlas stubborn tyrannical for mentor 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 aachen. And had come to share his ideas. More extreme but not very different from those my master

Shared with my silliest and had expounded that morning. The life of these dissidents became precarious in avignon and at the end of may Michael William of ockham. On a great deal of bergamot Francis of ascoli and one read it i am. Took flight

Pursued by the pope’s men to nice then to laugh my se and. Egg morte. Where they were overtaken by cardinal Pierre the arab lai who tried to press swayed 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 Jon publicly. Too late by then. The emperor’s fortunes were ebbing. From avignon John was planning to give the minor writes 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 minor rights resistance more closely without wasting so many months in his enemy’s power weakening his own position. But perhaps divine and diffidence 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 truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or achilles was right. Agamemnon or priam.

When they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes. But i am straying into melancholy digressions. I must tell instead of the end of that said 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. Uber tino 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 was still represented a power with which to negotiate.

With bettina was a par eighty unto himself at this point. John once Michael at court the new bettino in hell. If i know Bernard before tomorrow is over with the complicity of the fog uber Tina will have been 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 remedial and his black cats. Or by some surviving the chinon still lurks inside these walls. Uber Tina was worried. Then he asked. Then William said go and speak with the Abbot. Asked him for amounts and provisions and a

Letter to some distant Abbey beyond the alps. And take advantage of the darkness in 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 will bettino held him in a close embrace. Farewell William. You are 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 to bettino died

Mysteriously killed two years later. A hard and adventurous life the life of this meddlesome 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 abandoned 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 uberti no 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 then 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 great things for christianity and our mission has failed.

And yet you seem more interested in solving this mystery than in the conflict between the pope and the emperor. Mad men and children always speak the truth and so. It may be that as imperial advisor my friend my silliest is better than i but as inquisitor i am better.

Even better than Bernard g god forgive me. Because Bernard is interested not in discovering the guilty but in burning the accused and i on the contrary. Find the most joyful delight in unraveling a nice complicated not. And it must also be because.

At a time when as philosopher i doubt the world as an order. I am consoled to discover if not an order. At least a series of connect actions in small areas of the world’s affairs. Finally there is probably another reason. In this story things greater and more important than

The battle between John and Louis may be at stake. But it is a story of theft and vengeance among monks of scant virtue. I cried dubiously. Because of a forbidden book and so. A forbidden book. William replied. By now the monks were heading for supper.

Our meal was half over when Michael of cesena sat down beside us and told us who bettino had left. William heaved a sigh of relief. At the end of the meal we avoided the Abbot who was conversing with Bernard

And noted benaud who greeted us with a half smile as he tried to gain the door. William overtook him and forced him to follow us to a corner of the kitchen. Benno William asked him. Where is the book. What book. Benno neither of us is a fool.

I am speaking of the book we were hunting for today and several highnesses laboratory which i did not recognize but you recognized it very well and went back to get it. What makes you think i took it. I think you did and you think the same same where is it. I cannot tell.

Benno if you refused to tell me i will speak to the Abbot. I cannot tell by order of the Abbot then benno said with a virtuous air. Today after we saw each other something happened that you should know about. And baron guard’s death there was no assistant librarian.

This afternoon maliki proposed me for the position. Just half an hour ago the Abbot agreed and tomorrow morning i hope i will be initiated into the secrets of the library. True i did take the book this morning and i hid it in the palate in my cell without even looking

At it because i knew maliki was keeping an eye on me. Eva actually maliki made me the proposal i told you. And then i did what an assistant librarian must do i handed the book over to him. I could not refrain from speaking out and violently.

But benaud yesterday and the day before you. You said you were burning with the curiosity to know you didn’t want the library to conceal mysteries any longer you said a scholar must know. I was silent blushing. But William stopped me. And so. A few hours ago benaud joined the other side.

Now he is the guardian of those secrets he wanted to know and while he guards them he will have all the time he wants to learn them. But the others. I asked. Benner was speaking also in the name of all men of learning. Before. William said.

And he drew me away leaving benno the prey of confusion. Benno with him said to me. Is the victim of a great lust which is not that of baron gar or that of the seller. Like many scholars he has a lust for knowledge. Knowledge for it’s own sake.

Barred from a part of this knowledge he wanted to seize it. Now he has it. Maliki knew his man he used the best means to recover the book and sealed burners lips. You will ask me what the good is of controlling such a horde of learning if one has

Agreed not to put it at the disposal of everyone else. But this is exactly why i speak of lust. Roger bacon’s thirst for knowledge was not lust he wanted to employ his learning to make god’s people happier and so he did not seek knowledge for it’s own sake.

The nose is merely insatiable curiosity intellectual pride another way for a monkey to transform and delay the desires of his loins or the ardor that makes another man a warrior of the faith or of heresy. There is lust not only of the flesh. Bernard gears lustful is

Is a distorted lust for justice that becomes identified with a lust for power. Our holy and no longer Roman pontiff lusts for riches. And the celery as a youth had a lust to testify and transform into penance then a lust for death. And Ben as lust is for books.

By gaullists including that of onan. Who spilled his seed on the ground it is sterile and has nothing to do with love not even carnal love. I know i murmured despite myself. William pretended not to hear. Continuing his observations he said. True love once the good of the beloved.

Can it be the benaud once the good of his books and now they are also his and thinks they’re good lies and they’re being kept far from grasping hands i asked. The good of a book lies in it’s being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other

Signs which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them a book contains signs that produce no concept therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books at houses but now it lives to Bury them. This is why it has become a sink of iniquity.

The seller says he betrayed. So as benno he has betrayed. Oh what a nasty day my good ad so full of blood and ruination. I have had enough of this day. Let us also go to compline and then to bed. Coming out of the kitchen we encountered a morrow.

He asked us whether the rumor going around was true that maliki had proposed benaud as his assistant we could only confirm it. Al-maliki has accomplished many fine things today. I morrow said with his usual sneer of contempt and indulgence. If justice existed the devil would come and take him this very night. Compline.

In which a sermon is heard about the coming of the antichrist and ad so discovers the power of proper names. Vespers had been sung in a confused fashion while the interrogation of the seller was still underway with the curious novices escaping their master’s control to observed through windows

And cracks what was going on in the chapter hall. Now the whole community was to pray for the good soul of several rinus. Everyone expected the Abbot to speak and wondered what he would say. But instead. After the ritual homily of st Gregory the response three and the three prescribed psalms.

The Abbot did step into the pulpit but only to say he would remain silent this evening. Too many calamities have befallen the Abbey he said to allow even the spiritual father to speak in a tone of reproach and admonition. Everyone with no exceptions should now make a strict examination of his conscience.

But since it was necessary for someone to speak. He suggested the admonition should come from the oldest of their number now close to death. The brother who is the least involved of all in the terrestrial passions that had generated so many evils. By right of age Allen nardo of greater variety should speak.

But all knew the fragile condition of the venerable brothers health. Immediately after Alan ardour when the order established by the inevitable progress of time. Came Jorge. And the Abbot now called upon him. We heard a murmuring from the section of the stalls where i morrow and the other Italians usually sat.

I suspected the Abbot had entrusted the sermon to Jorge without discussing the matter with Ali nardo. My master pointed out to me in a whisper that the abbott’s decision not to speak had been wise. Because whatever he might have said would have been judged by Bernard and the other Avenue nice present.

Old Jorge on the other hand would confine himself to his usual mystical prophecies. And the ave knees would not attach much importance to them. But i will William added. Because i don’t believe or he agreed and perhaps asked to speak without a very precise purpose.

Or he climbed into the public with someone’s help. His face was illuminated by the tripod which alone lighted the nave. The glow of the flame underlined the darkness shrouding his eyes which seemed to black holes. Most beloved brothers he began and all of our guests most dear to us.

If you cared or listened to this poor old man. The four deaths that have afflicted our Abbey not to mention the sins remote and recent. Of the most abject among the living. Are not as you know to be attributed to the severity of nature which. Implacable in its rhythms

Ordains our earthly day from cradle to grave. All of you no doubt believe that. Though you have been overwhelmed with grief these sad events have not involved your soul. Because all of you save one are innocent and when this one has been punished.

While you will to be sure continue to mourn the absence of those who have gone. You will not have to clear yourselves of any charge before the tribunal of god. So you believe. Mad men. He shouted in an awful voice. Mad men and presumptuous fools that you are.

He who has killed will bear before god the burden of his guilt but only because he agreed to become the vehicle of the decrees of god. Just as it was necessary sorry for someone to betray Jesus in order for the mystery of redemption to be accomplished.

Yet the lord sanctioned damnation and vituperation for the one who betrayed him. Thus someone has sinned in these days bringing death and ruination. But i say to you that this ruination was if not desired. At least permitted by god for the humbling of our pride.

He was silent and turned his blank gaze on the solemn assembly as if his eyes could perceive it’s emotions. As in fact with his ear he savoured the silence and consternation. In this community. He went on. For some time. The serpent of pride has been coiled. But what pride. The pride of power.

In a monastery isolated from the world. No certainly not. The pride of wealth. My brothers before for the known world echoed with long debates about poverty and ownership from the days of our founder. We even when we had everything have never had anything. Our one true wealth being the observation of the rule.

Prayer and work. But of our work the work of our order and in particular the work of this monastery. Apart. Indeed the substance is study and the preservation of knowledge. Preservation of thy say. Not search for. Because the property of knowledge as a divine thing is that it is complete

And has been defined since the beginning. In the perfection of the word which expresses itself to itself. Preservation i say and not search. Because it a property of knowledge as a human thing that it has been defined and completed over the course of the centuries from the preaching of the prophets to the

Interpretation of the fathers of the church. There is no progress. No revolution of ages the history of knowledge. But at most. A continuous and sublime recapitulation. Human history proceeds with a motion that cannot be arrested. From the creation through the redemption towards the return of Christ triumphant

Who will appear seated on a cloud to judge the quick and the dead. But human and divine knowledge does not follow this path. Steady as afford that does not cede it allows us when we are humble and alert to it’s voice to follow to predict this path but it is not touched

By the path. I am he who is. Said the god of the Jews. I am the way the truth and the life said our lord. There you have it. Knowledge is nothing but the all the comment on these two truths. Everything else that has been said was uttered by pro efforts.

By the evangelists by the fathers and the doctors to make these two sayings clearer. And sometimes an opposite comment came also from the pagans who were ignorant of them and their words have been taken into the Christian tradition. But beyond that. There is nothing further to say. There is only to continue meditation

To gloss preserve. This was and should be the office of our Abbey with its splendid library nothing else. It is said that an oriental if one day set fire to the library of a famous and glorious and proud city. And that as those thousands of volumes were burning he said

That they could and should disappear. Either they will repeating what the koran already said and therefore they were useless. Or else they contradicted that book sake to the infidels and therefore they were harmful. The doctors of the church and we along with them did not reason in this way.

Everything that involves commentary and clarification of scripture must be preserved. Because it enhances the glory of the divine writings. What contradicts must not be destroyed. Because only if we preserve it can it be contradicted in it’s turn by those who can

Do so and are so charged in the ways and times is that the lord chooses. Hence. The responsibility of our order through the centuries and the burden of our Abbey today. Proud of the truth we proclaim humble and prudent in preserving those words hostile to the truth

Without allowing ourselves to be soiled by them. Now my brothers. What is the sin of pride that contempt the scholar monk. That of considering as his task. Not preserving but seeking some information not yet vouchsafed mankind. As if the last word had not already resounded in the words of the last angel who

Speaks in the last book of scripture. For i testify unto every man that here at the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add under these things. God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.

And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy. God shall take away his power part out of the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things which are written in this book. There. Does it not seem to you my unfortunate brothers.

That these words only Adam braidwood has recently happened within these walls whereas what has happened within these walls Adam breeds only the same vicissitude as that afflicting the century in which we live. Determined in word and indeed. In cities as in castles in proud universities and cathedral churches

To seek anxiously to discover new councils to the words of truth distorting the meaning of that truth already rich in all the scalia and requiring only fearless defense and not foolish increment. This is the pride that lurked and is still lurking within these walls.

And i say to him who has labored and labors to break the seals of the books that are not his to see. That it is this pride the lord wanted to punish and will continue to punish if it is not brought down and does not humble itself elf.

For the lord has no difficulty in finding all ways and still thanks to our fragility. The instruments of his vengeance. Did you hear that ad so. William murmured to me. The old man knows more than he is saying. Whether or not he had a hand in his business he knows and is warning.

That if certain curious monks continue violating the library the Abbey will not regain it’s peace. Or hey after a long pause now resumed speaking. But who finally. Is the very symbol of this pride. Of whom the proud are the illustration and messengers the accomplices and standard bearers. Who in truth has acted

And is perhaps acting also inside these walls. So as to warn us that the time is at hand. And to console us because if the time is at hand the sufferings will surely be intolerable but not infinite since the great cycle of this universe is about to be fulfilled. Oh whoa whoa.

You have all understood very well and you fear to utter the name for it is also yours and you are afraid of it. But though you have fear i shall have none and i will say this name in a loud voice so that your viscera may twist in fright

And your teeth chatter and cut off your tongue and the chill that forms in your blood it’d make a dark veil descend over your eyes. He is the foul beast. He is. The anti Christ. He paused for a long time. The listeners seemed dead.

The only moving thing in the whole church was the flame in the tripod. But even the shadows it formed seemed to have frozen. The only sound faint was Jorge’s gasping. As he wiped the sweat from his brow. Then Jorge went on. You would perhaps like to say to me.

No he has not yet come where are the signs of his coming. Fool who says this. Why we have them before our eyes day after day in the great amphitheatre of the world and in the narrower image of the Abbey. The premonitory catastrophes. It has been said. That when the moment is near

A foreign king will rise in the west lord of immense deceits atheist killer of men fraudulent thirsting for gold skilled in tricks wicked. Enemy and persecutor of the faithful and in his time time he will not hold silver dear but will esteem only gold.

I know well you who listen to me hasten now to make your calculations to see whether he of whom i speak resembles the pope. Or the emperor or the king of France or whomever you will so that you will be able to

Say he is my enemy and i am on the right side. But i am not so ingenuous. I will not single out one man for you. The antichrist when he comes comes in all and for all and each is a part of him.

He will be in the bands of brigands who sacked cities and countryside. He will be an unforeseen signs in the heavens whereby suddenly rainbows will appear horns and fires while the moaning of voices will be heard and the sea will boil. It has been said that men and animals will generate monsters

But this means that hearts will conceive hatred and discord. Do not look around you for a glimpse of the animals of the illuminations you so enjoy on parchments. It has been said that young wives not long wait will give birth to babes already able to speak perfectly.

Who will bring word that the time is at hand and will ask to be killed. But do not search the villages down below us the two wise babes have already been killed inside these very walls. And like those babes of the prophecies. They had the appearance of men already old

And in the prophecy they were the quadruple children and the ghosts in the embryos that were the prophecy in the mother’s wombs uttering magic spells. And all has been written do you know that. It has been written that many will be the agitations among those of rank and among the peoples the churches.

That wicked Shepherds will rise up perverse disdainful greedy pleasure seeking lovers of gain and. Years of idle speech boastful proud avid arrogant plunged in lewdness she goes vain glory enemies of the gospel ready to repudiate the straight gate to despise the true word. And they will hate every bath of piety

They will not repent their sins and therefore will spread among all peoples disbelief fraternal hatred wickedness hardness of heart and the indifference robbery and drunkenness in temper endless seriousness carnal pleasure fornication and all the other vices. Affliction will vanish and humility. Love of peace poverty compassion the gift of tears. Come.

Do you not recognize yourselves all of you here present monks of this Abbey and mighty visitors from the outside world. In the pause that followed a rustling was heard. It was cardinal bertrand wriggling on his bench. After all i thought. Or he was behaving like a great preacher

And as he lashed his brothers he was not sparing the guests either. I would have given anything to know what was going through Bernard’s mind at that moment. Or the minds of the fat ave knees. And it will be at this point precisely this. Jorge thundered.

That the antichrist will have his blasphemous apparition ape as he wants to be of our lord. In those times. Which are these. All kingdoms will be swept away. There will be famine and poverty and poor harvests and winters of exceptional severity. And the children of that time which is this.

Will no longer have anyone to administer their goods and preserve food in their store rooms and they will be harassed in the markets of buying and selling. Blessed than are those who will no longer live or who are living will be able to survive. Then will come the son of perdition.

The enemy who boasts and swells up. Displaying many virtues to deceive the whole earth and to prevail over the just. Syria will fall fall and mourn her sons. Celestia will raise her head until he who is called to judge her shall appear.

The daughter of Babylon will rise from the throne of her splendor to drink from the cup of bitterness. Cappadocia lycia and like O’Neill will bow down for whole thrones will be destroyed in the corruption of their iniquity. Barbarian camps and war chariots will appear on all sides to occupy the land. In Armenia

In pontus. In Bethany or ewalds will die by the sword girl children will be taken prisoner sons and daughters will commit incest. Presidio who boasts in her glory will be laid prostrate the sword will pay. The midst of venetia judea will be garbed in the morning and will prepare

For the day of perdition brought on by her impurity. On every side will appear abomination and desolation the antichrist will defeat the west and will destroy the trade routes. In his hand he will have sword and raging fire and in violent fury the flame will burn. His strength will be blasphemy

His hand treachery the right hand will be ruin the left the bearer of dark bonus. These are the features that will mock him. His head will be a burning fire. His right eye will be bloodshot. His left eye or feline green with two pupils and his eyebrows will be white

His lower lip swollen his ankle weak his feet big his thumb crush then the elongated. It seems is one portrait. William whispered chuckling. It was a very wicked remark but i was grateful to him for it because my hair was beginning to stand on end. I could barely stifle a laugh.

My cheeks swelling as my clenched lips let out a puff. A sounded in the silence following the old man’s words was clearly audible but fortunately everyone thought someone was coughing or weeping or shuddering. And all of them were right. It is the moment. Or he was now saying.

When everything will fall into lawlessness. Sons will raise their hands against fathers wives will plot against husbands husbands will bring wives to law masters will be inhuman to servants and servants will disobey their masters yeah. There will be no more respect for the old. The young will demand to rule

Work will seem a useless drawer to all everywhere songs will rise praising licence bice dissolute Liberty of behavior. And after that rape adultery perjury sins against nature will follow in a great wave and disease and so saying and so bells and flying bodies will appear in the heavens

In the midst of the good christians false prophets will arise false apostles characters impostors wizards rapists usual Rose perjury and false fires. The Shepherds will turn into wolves priests will lie. Monks will desire things of this world the poor will not hasten to the aid of their lords

The powerful will be without mercy that just will bear witness to injustice. All cities will be shaken by earthquakes. There will be pestilence in every land storm winds will uproot the earth the fields will be contaminated the sea will secrete black humors new when strange wonders will take place upon the moon.

The stars will abandon their courses other stars unknown will farrow the sky. It will snow in summer and in winter. The heat will be intense. And the times of the end will have come. And the end of time. On the first day of the third hour in the

Firmament a great and powerful voice will be raised a purple cloud will advance from the north thunder and lightning will follow it and on the earth. A rain of blood will fall. On the second day the earth will be uprooted from its seat and the smoke of a great

Fire will pass through the gates of the sky. On the third day. The abuses of the earth will rumble from the four corners of the cosmos. The pinnacles of the firmament will open the air will be filled with columns of smoke and there will be the stench of sulfur until the tenth hour.

On the fourth day early in the morning the abyss will liquefy and emit explosions and buildings will collapse. On the fifth day at the sixth hour the powers of light and the wheel of the sun will be destroyed and there will be darkness over the earth to leaning

And the stars and the moon will cease their office. On the sixth day at the fourth hour the firmament will split from east to west and the angels will be able to look down on the earth through the crack in the heavens and all those on earth

Will be able to see the angels looking down from heaven. Then all men will hide on the mountains to escape the gaze of the just angels. And on the seventh day. Christ will arrive in the light of his father. And there will then be the judgment of the just and their ascent.

In the eternal bliss of bodies and souls. But this is not the object of your meditation this evening proud brothers. It is not sinners who will see the dawn of the eighth day. When a sweet and tender voice will rise from the east in the midst of the heavens

And that angel will be seen who commands all the other holy angels and all the angels will advance together with him seated on a chariot of cloud odds filled with joy speeding through the air to set free the blessing who have believed and all together they will rejoice because the

Destruction of this world will have been consummated. But this is not to make us rejoice proudly this evening. We will meditate instead on the words the lord will utter to drive from him those who have not earned salvation. Barr from me ye cursed and

Into the eternal fire that has been prepared for you by the devil and his ministers. You yourselves have earned it. And now enjoy it. Go ye from me. Descending into the eternal darkness and into the unquenchable fire. I made you and you became followers of another. You will became servants of another lord

Go and dwell with him the darkness with him. The serpent who never rests. Amid the gnashing of teeth. I gave you ears to hear the scripture and you listen to the words of pagans. I formed a mouth for you to glorify god and you used it for the lies of poets

And the riddles of buffoons. I gave you eyes to see the light of my precepts. And you use them to peer into the darkness. I am a humane judge but at just one. To each i shall give what he deserves. I would have mercy on you

But i find no oil in your jars. I would be impelled to take pity but your lamps are not cleaned. Go from me. Thus will speak the lord. And they. And perhaps we. Will descend into the eternal torment. In the name of the father. Of the son. And of the holy ghost.

Feeling no desire to speak with one another the minor writes in the pope’s men disappeared. Longing for solitude and rest. My heart was heavy. Too bad and so William said to me climbing the stairs of the pilgrims hospice. This is not a night for roaming about.

Bernard ye might have the idea of heralding the end of the world by beginning with our caucuses. Tomorrow we must try to be present at Madden’s because immediately afterward Michael and the other minor rites will leave. Will Bernard leave too with his prisoners. I asked in a faint voice.

Surely he has nothing more to do here. He will want to proceed Michael to avignon but in such a way that Michael’s arrival coincides with the trial of the seller. A minor right heretic and murderer. The pyre of the seller will illuminate like a propitiate or a torch

Michael’s first meeting with the pope. And what will become of Salvatore and. The girl. Salvatore will go with the seller because he will have to testify at the trial. Perhaps in exchange for this service Bernard will Grant him his life.

He may allow him to escape and then have him killed or he may really let him go because a man like Salvatore is of no interest to a man like Bernard. Who knows. Perhaps Salvatore will end up a cutthroat bandit in some forest of long duck. And the girl. I told you

She has burnt flesh. But she will be burned beforehand along the way to the edification of some Catherine village along the coast. I have heard it said that Bernard is to meet his colleagues Jacques fournier. Remember that name. For the present he is burning other Jensen’s but he has higher ambitions.

And a beautiful witch to throw on the fire will increase the prestige and the fame of both. But can nothing be done to save them i cried. Can’t the Abbot intervene. For whom for the seller a confessed criminal. For a wretch like Salvatore. Or are you thinking of the girl.

What if i were i made bold to say. After all of the three she is the only truly innocent one you know she is not a witch. And do you believe that the Abbot after what has happened wants to risk for a witch what little prestige he has left.

But he assumed the responsibility for uber tinos escape. Uber tino was one of his monks and was not accused of anything. Besides what nonsense are you saying. Who bettino is an important man Bernard could have struck him only from behind. So the seller was right. The simple folk always pay for all

Even for those who speak in their favor. Even for those i go bettino and Michael. Who with their words of penance have driven the simple to rebel. I was in such despair that i did not consider that the girl was not even a Friday cello seduced by uber Tina’s mystical vision

But a peasant. Paying for something that did not concern her. So it is. William answered me sadly. And if you are really seeking a glimmer of justice i will tell you that one day the big dogs. The pope and the emperor in order to make peace

Will pass over the corpses of the smaller dogs who bit one another in their service. And Michael or uber Tina will be treated as your girl is being treated today. Now i know that William was prophesying or rather his village ising on the basis of principles of natural philosophy.

But at that moment his prophecies and his syllogism did not console me in the least. The only sure thing was that the girl would be burned. And i felt responsible because. It was as if she would also expiate on the pyre the sin i had committed with her.

I burst shamefully into sobs and fled to my cell. Where all through the night i chewed my palate and moaned helplessly for i was not even allowed. As they did in the romances of chivalry i had read with my companions at milk to lament and call out the beloved’s name.

This was the only earthly love of my life. And i could not then. Or ever after. Call that love by name. Chapter six. Sixth day. Madden’s. In which the princes said a route and maliki slumps to the ground. We went down to mountains. That last part of the night virtually the first

Part of the imminent new day was still foggy. As i crossed the cloister the dampness penetrated to my bones. Aching after my uneasy sleep. Although the church was cold i knelt under those walls with a sigh of relief sheltered from the elements comforted by the warmth of other bodies and by prayer.

The chanting of the psalms had just begun when Michael pointed to the stalls opposite us. It was an empty place in between Jorge and pacific as of tivoli. It was the place of maliki who always sat beside the blind man. Nor were we the only ones who had noticed the absence.

On one side i caught a worried glance from the Abbot all too well aware surely that those vacancies always heralded grim news. And on the other i noticed that old Jorge was unusually agitated. His face. As a rule so inscrutable because of those white blank eyes

Was plunged almost entirely in darkness but his hands were nervous and restless. In fact more than once he groped at the seat beside him. As if to see whether it was occupied. He repeated that gesture again and again at regular intervals as if hoping that the absent man would appear

At any moment but fearing not to find him. Where can the librarian be i whispered to William. Maliki William answered. Is by now the sole possessor of the book if he is not guilty of the crimes then he may not know the dangers that book involves. There was nothing further to be said

We could only wait. And we waited. William and i the Abbot two continued to stare at the empty place and Jorge who never stopped questioning the darkness with his hands. When we reached the end of the office the Abbot reminded monks and novices that it

Was necessary to prepare for the Christmas high mass. Therefore as was the custom. The time before lauds would be spent as saying the accord of the whole community in the performance of some chance prescribed for the occasion. That assembly of devout men was in effect trained

As a single body a single harmonious voice. Through a process that had gone on for years they acknowledged their unification into a single soul in their singing. The Abbot invited them to chant the city ruined. So they won’t print your pace at at versus may look way banter.

In equip as a coup decent may. At uva may dominate daily meals salvo may fuck proctor Magnum. Misery accordion to em. I asked myself whether the Abbot had not chosen deliberately that gradual to be chanted on that particular night the cried to god of the persecuted. Imploring help against wicked princes.

And there the Princess envoys were still present at the service to be reminded of how for centuries. Our order had been prompt to resist the persecution of the power powerful. Thanks to its special bond with the lord god of hosts. And indeed the beginning of the chant created an impression of great power.

On the first syllable a slow and solemn chorus began. Dozens and dozens of voices. Whose bass sound filled the naves and floated over our heads. And yet seemed to rise from the heart of the earth. Nor did it break off because as other voices began to weave over that deep and continuing line

A series of vocals Jesus and Melissa miss. It. Telluric. Continued to dominate and did not cease for the whole time that it took a speaker to repeat twelve ave Maria’s in a slow and Cadence voice. And as if released from every fear by the confidence that the prolonged syllable

Allegory of the duration of eternity gave to those praying. The other voices and especially the novices on that rock solid base raised cusps columns pinnacles of requests and and underscored new my. And as my heart was dazed with sweetness at the vibration of a clinical sort of practice at oculus or a seleucus.

Those voices seemed to say to me that the soul of those praying and my own as i listened to them. Unable to bear the exuberance of feeling was lacerated through them to express joy grief praise love. In an ear impetus of sweet sounds.

Meanwhile the obstinate insistence of the thorny invoices did not let up as if the threatening presence of enemies. Of the powerful who persecuted the people of the lord remained unresolved. Until that neptunia and roiling of a single note seemed overcome or at least

Convinced and and folded by the rejoicing hallelujahs of those who opposed it. And all dissolved on a majestic and perfect cord. And and a recipe numa. Once the city ruined had been uttered with a kind of stubborn difficulty the principes Rose in the air with grand and seraphic com.

I no longer asked myself who were the mighty who spoke against me. Against us. The shadow of that seated menacing ghost dissolved and disappeared. And other ghosts i also believed dissolved at that point because i’m looking again at maliki’s stall after my attention had been absorbed by the chant.

I saw the figure of the library and among the others in prayer as if he had never been missing. I looked at William and saw a hint of relief in his eyes the same relief that i noted from the distance in the eyes of the abbott.

As for Jorge he had once more extended his hands and encountering his neighbor’s body had withdrawn them promptly. But i could not say what feelings stirred him. Now the choir was festively chanting the Audi over may whose bright eyes swelled happily through the church. Even the you did not seem grim.

As in that said a ruined but full of holy vigor. The monks and novices sang as the ruler change requires was body erect. Throat free head looking up. The book almost at shoulder height so they could read without having to lower their

Heads and thus causing the breath to come from the chest with less force. But it was still night and though the trumpets of rejoicing blared. The haze of sleep trapped many of the singers who. Lost perhaps in the production of a long note.

Trusting the very wave of the chant nodded at times drawn by sleepiness. Then the Lakers even in that situation explored the faces with a light one by one to bring them back to wakefulness of body and soul.

So it was a waker who first noticed maliki sway in a curious fashion as if he had suddenly plunged back into the sumerian fog of asleep that he had probably not enjoyed during the night. The waker went over to him with a lamp illuminating his face and so attracting my attention.

The librarian had no reaction. The man touched him and maliki slumped forward heavily. The waker barely had time to catch him before he fell. The chanting slowed down the voices died there was brief bewilderment. William had jumped immediately from his feet and rushed to the place where pacific as

A tivoli and the waker were now laying maliki on the ground unconscious. We reached them almost at the same time as the Abbot and in the light of the lamp we saw the poor man’s face. I’ve already described maliki’s countenance but that night. In that glow it was the very image of death.

The sharp nose. The hollow eyes the sunken temples the white wrinkled years with lobes turned outward the skin of the face now rigid top hot and dry the color of the cheeks yellowish and suffused with a dark shadow. The eyes were still open and a labored breathing escaped those parched lips.

He opened his mouth and as i stooped behind William who had bent over him i saw now blackish tongue stir within the cloister of his teeth. William his arm around maliki’s shoulders raised him. Wiping away with his free hand a film of sweat that blanched his brow. Maliki felt a touch a present

He stared straight ahead surely not seeing certainly not recognizing who was before him. He raised a trembling hand grasped William by the chest drawing his face down until they almost touched. Then faintly and horsley he uttered some words. He told me. Truly. It had the power. Of a thousand scorpions. Who told you

William asked him. Who. Maliki tried again to speak but he was seized by a great trembling and his head fell backward. His face lost all color all semblance of life. He was dead. William stood up. He noticed the Abbot beside him but did not say a word to him.

Then behind the Abbot he saw Bernard ye. My lord Bernard William asked. Who killed this man after you so cleverly found and confined the murderers. Do not ask me Bernard said. I have never said i consigned to the law all the criminals loose in this Abbey.

I would have done so gladly had i been able. He looked at William. But the others i now leave to the severity. Or the excessive indulgence of my lord abbott. The Abbot blanched and remained silent. Then Bernard left. At that moment we heard a kind of whimpering a choked sob. It was Jorge

On his kneeling bench supported by a monk who must have described to him what had happened. It will never end. He said in a broken voice. Oh lord forgive us all. William bent over the corpse for another moment. He grasped the wrists. Turned the palms of the hands toward the light.

The pads of the first three fingers of the right hand. Were darkened. Lords. In which a new seller is chosen but not a new librarian. Was it time for lauds already. Was it earlier or later. From that point on i lost all temporal sense. Perhaps hours went by perhaps less.

In which maliki’s body was laid out in church on a catalog. While the brothers formed a semicircle around it. The Abbot issued instructions for a prompt funeral. I i heard him summoned benneteau and Nicolas have more Amanda. In less than a day he said that the Abbey had

Been deprived of it’s librarian and it’s celery. You he said the Nicholas will take over the duties of remedial you know the jobs of many here in the Abbey. Named someone to take your place in charge of the forges and provide for today’s immediate necessities in the kitchen the refectory.

You are excused from officers go. Then to benaud he said. Only yesterday evening you were named maliki’s assistant. Provide for the opening of the scriptorium and make sure no one goes up into the library alone. Shyly Bennett pointed out that he had not yet been initiated into the secrets of that place.

The Abbot glared at him sternly. No one has said you will be. You see that work goes on and is offered as a prayer for our dead brothers and for those who will yet die. Each monk will work only on the books already given him.

Those who wish may come felt the catalog nothing else. You are excused from vespers because at that hour you will lock up everything. But how will i come out benno asked. Good question. I will lock the lower doors after supper go. He went out with them avoiding William

Who wanted to talk to him. In the choir a little group remained. Ally nardo pacific gas of tivoli i maro of Alexandria and Peter of Santa bono. I morrow was sneering. Let us thank the lord he said with the German dead there was the risk of

Having a new library and even more barbarous. Who do you think will be named in his place William asked. Peter Santa bono smiled and egg medically. After everything that has happened these past few days the problem is no longer the librarian but the Abbot. Hush pacifica’s said to him.

And ally nardo with his usual pensive look said. They will commit another injustice as in my day. They must be stopped. Who William asked. Pacifica took him confidentially by the arm and led him a distance from the old man toward the door. Ali nardo. As you know we love him very much.

For us he represents the old tradition and the finest days of the Abbey. But sometimes he speaks without knowing what he says. We are all worried about the new librarian the man must be worthy and mature and wise. That is all there is to it. Musty no Greek will he amassed.

And arabic as tradition has it his office requires it. But there are many among us with these gifts. I if i may say so and Peter and i morrow. Then ono’s Greek. Benaud was too young. I do not know why maliki chose him as his assistant yesterday that. Did the del mono Greek.

I believe not no surely not. But finances knew it and baron gar. Very well i thank you. We left to go and get something in the kitchen. Why did you want to find out who knew Greek i asked. Because all those who die was blackened fingers no Greek.

Therefore it would be well to expect the next corpse among those who know Greek. Including me you are safe. And what do you think of maliki’s last words. You heard them. Scorpions. The fifth trumpet announces among other things the coming of locusts that will torment men with a sting like scorpions.

And maliki informed us that some one had forewarned him. The sixth trumpet i said. Announces horses with lions heads from whose mouths come smoke and fire and brimstone. Written by men covered with breastplates the color of fire jacinth and brimstone.

Too many things but the next crime might take place near the horse barn we must keep an eye on it and we must prepare ourselves for the seventh blast. Two more victims still. Who are the most likely candidates. If the objective is the secret of the finest Africa. Those who know it.

And as far as i can tell that means one the Abbot. Unless the plot is something else. You heard them just now scheming to depose the Abbot but Allen artist spoke in the plural. The Abbot must be warned i said. Of what that they will kill him. I have no convincing evidence.

I proceed as if the murderer and i think alike. But if he were pursuing another design. And if especially there were not a murderer. What do you mean. I don’t know exactly but as i said to you we must imagine all possible orders. And all disorders. Prime.

In which Nicholas tells many things as the crypt of the treasure is visited. Nicholas of Myra mundo in his new position as seller was giving orders to the cooks and they were supplying him with information about the operation of the kitchen.

William wanted to speak with him but Nicholas asked us to wait a few moments. Until he had to go down into the crypt of the treasure to supervise the polishing of the glass cases. Which was still his responsibility. There he would have more time for conversation.

A little later he did in fact ask us to follow him. He entered the church. Went behind the main altar while the monks were setting up a a in the nave to keep vigil over maliki’s corpse. And lead us down a little ladder.

At it’s foot we found ourselves in a room with a very low vaulted ceiling supported by thick rough stone columns. We were in the crypt where the riches of the Abbey were stored a place of which the Abbot was very jealous and which he allowed to be opened only under exceptional circumstances

And for very important visitors. On every side were cases of different dimensions in them objects of wondrous beauty shown in the glow of the torches. Lighted by two of Nicholas’s trusted assistant. Gold vestments golden crowns studded with gems. Coffers of various metals engraved with figures works in yellow and ivory. In ecstasy.

Nicholas showed us an avenger larian whose binding displayed amazing enamel plaques composing a very gated unity of graduated compartment outlined in gold filigree and fixed by precious stones in the guise of nails. He showed us a delicate ridiculous was two columns of lapis lazuli and gold which

Framed and entombment of Christ and fine silver bar relief. Surmounted by a golden cross set with thirteen diamonds against the background of grainy annex. While the little pediment was scalloped with agate and rubies. Then i saw Chris elephant tiny diptych divided into five sections. With five scenes from the life of Christ

And in the center of mystical lamp composed of cells of gilded silver with glass paste. A single polychrome image on a ground of wax and whiteness. Nicholas’s face and gestures as he illustrated these things for us were radiant with pride. William praised the objects he had seen.

Then asked Nicholas what sort of man maliki had been. Nicholas moistened one finger and rubbed it over a crystal surface imperfectly polished then answered with a half smile not looking William in the face. As many said maliki seemed quite thoughtful but on the contrary he was a very simple man.

According to our Leonardo he was a fool. Ally nardo bears a grudge against someone for a remote event when he was denied the honor of being librarian. I too have heard talk of that but it is an old story dating back at least fifty years.

When i arrived here the librarian was Robert a Bobby oh and the old monks muttered about an injustice committed against Alan ardell. Robert had an assistant who later died and maliki still very young was appointed in his place. Many said that maliki was without merit

That though he claimed to know Greek and arabic it was not true he was only good at aping copying manuscripts in those languages in fine calligraphy without understanding what he was copying. Leonardo insinuated that maliki had been put in that position to favourite the schemes of his. Ally nachos enemy.

But i didn’t not understand whom he meant. That is the whole story. There have always been whispers that maliki protected the librarian like a guard dog but with no knowledge of what he was guarding. For that matter there was also whispering against baron gar when maliki chose him as assistant.

They said that the young man was no cleverer than his master. That he was only an intriguing. They also said. But you must have heard these rumors yourself by now. That there was a strange relationship between him and maliki. Old gossip.

Then as you know there was talk about baron gar and the del mo and the young scribes said that maliki silently suffered horrible jealousy. And then there was also murmuring about the ties between maliki and Jorge. No not in the sense you might believe no one has ever murmured against Jorge’s virtue.

But maliki is librarian by tradition should have chosen the Abbot as his confessor whereas all the other monks go to Jorge for confession or to ally nardo but the old man is by now almost mindless. Well they said that in spite of this the librarian conferred too often was Jorge

As if the Abbot directed maliki soul but Jorge ruled his body his actions his work. Indeed as you know yourself and have probably seen if anyone wanted to know the location of an ancient book forgotten book. He did not ask maliki but Jorge. Maliki kept the catalogue and went up into the

Library but Jorge knew what each title meant. Why did Jorge know so many things about the library. He is the oldest after all Leonardo he has been here since his youth. Or he must be over eighty and they say he has been blind at least forty years perhaps longer.

How did he become so learned before his blindness. All there are legends about him. It seems that when he was only a boy he was already blessed by divine grace and in his native castille he read the books of the arabs and the great doctors while still a child.

And then even after his blindness even now he sits for long hours in the library he has others recite the catalogue to him and bring him books and a novel reads aloud to him for hours and hours. Now that maliki and barren gaara dead who is

Left who possesses the secrets of the library. The Abbot the Abbot must now hand them on to benaud. If he chooses. Why do you say if he chooses. Because benno is young and he was named assistant while maliki was still alive. Being assistant librarian is different from being librarian. By tradition

The librarian later becomes abbott. Ah so that is it. That is why the post of librarian is so coveted. But then abo was once librarian. Now not abo. His appointment took place before i arrived here it must be thirty years ago now. Before that Paul of rimini was abbott a curious

Man about whom they tell strange stories. It seems he was a most voracious reader. He knew by heart all the books in the library but he had a strange infirmity. He was unable to write. They called him. Abis a graphic as. He became Abbot when very young

It was said he had the support of our greatest Clooney. But this is old monkish gossip. Anyway Paul became abbott and Robert Bobby orr took his place in the library but he wasted away as an illness consumed him. They knew he would never be able to govern

The Abbey and when Paul of rimini disappeared. He died. No he disappeared i do not know how. One day he went off on a journey and never came back. Perhaps he was killed by thieves in the course of his travels. Anyway when Paul disappeared Robert could not

Take his place and there were obscure plants. Abo it is said. Was the natural son of the lord of this district. He grew up in the Abbey of arson over. It was said that as a youth he attended st Thomas when he died there

And had been in charge of carrying that great body down the stairs of a tower where the corpse could not pass. That was his moment of glory the malicious here murmured. The fact is he was elected Abbot even though he had not been librarian.

And he was instructed by someone Robert i believe in the mysteries of the library. Now you understand why i do not know whether the Abbot will want to instruct benaud. It would be like naming him his successor. A he atlas youth. A half barbarian grammarian from the far north

What could he know about this country the Abbey its relations with the lords of the area. But maliki was not Italian either or baron gar and yet both of them were appointed to the library. There is a mysterious thing for you. The monks grumble that for the past half century or

More the Abbey has been forsaking it’s traditions. This is why over fifty years ago perhaps earlier Ali nardo aspired to the position of librarian. The librarian had always been Italian. There is no scarcity of great minds in this land. And besides you see. Here Nicholas hesitated

As if reluctant to say what he was about to say. You see. Maliki and barren guard died perhaps so that they would not become abbott. He stirred waved his hand before his face as if to dispel thoughts less than honest then made the sign of the cross. Whatever am i saying

You see in this country shameful things have been happening for many years even in the monasteries in the papal court in the churches. Conflicts to gain power accusations of heresy to take a present from someone. How ugly. I am losing faith in the human race.

I see plots and palace conspiracies on every side. That our Abbey should come to this a nest of vipers risen through occult magic and what had been a triumph of sainted members. Look the past of this monastery. He pointed to the treasures scattered all around and

Leaving the crosses and other vessels he took us to see the reliquaries which represented the glory of this place. Look he said this is the tip of the spear that pierced the side of the savior. We saw a golden box with a crystal lid containing a purple cushion on which lay a

Piece of iron triangular in shape once corroded by rust but now restored to vivid splendor by long application of oils and waxes. But this was still nothing. For in another box of silver studded with amethysts it’s front panel transparent. I saw a piece of the venerated wood of the holy

Cross brought to this Abbey by queen Helena herself mother of the emperor constantine. After she had gone as a pilgrim to the holy places. Excavated the hill of golgotha and the holy sepulchre and constructed a cathedral over or it. Then Nicholas showed us other things and i could not

Describe them all in their number and their rarity. There was in the case of aquamarine a nail of the cross. In an ample lying on a cushion of little withered roses there was a portion of the crown of thorns. And in another box again on a blanket of dried flowers.

A yellow shred of the tablecloth from the last supper. And then there was the purse of st Matthew of silver links. And in a cylinder bound by a Violet ribbon eaten by time and sealed with gold. A bone from st Anne’s arm. I saw wonder of wonders. Under a glass bell

On a red cushion embroidered with pearls. A piece of the manger of Bethlehem and a hands length of the purple tunic of st John the evangelist. Two links of the chains that bound the ankles of the apostle Peter in Rome. The skull of st adalbert the sword of st Stephen.

The tibia of st Margaret a finger of st by tailors. A rib of Saint Sophia. The chin of st a bonus. The upper part of st Christopher items shoulder blade. The engagement ring of st Joe’s Joseph. A tooth of the baptist. Moses is rod.

A tattered scrap of very fine lace from the virgin Mary’s wedding dress. And then other things that were not relics but still bore perennial witness to wonders and wondrous beings from distant lands brought to the Abbey by monks who had traveled to the farthest ends of the world. A stuffed vasilis and hydra.

A unicorn’s horn. An egg that a hermit found inside another eg. A piece of the manner that had fed the hebrews in the desert. A whale’s tooth a coconut. The scapula of an animal from before the flood. And elephants ivory tusk. The rib of a dolphin.

And then more relics that i did not identify whose reliquaries were perhaps more precious the ne. And some judging by the craftsmanship of their containers of blackened silver. Very ancient. And endless series of fragments bone cloth wood metal glass. And files with dark powders one of which i learned

Contained the charred remains of the city of sodom. And another some water from the walls of Jericho. All things even the humblest for which an emperor would have given more than a castle and which represented a hoard not only of immense prestige but also of actual

Material wealth for the Abbey that preserved them. I continued wandering about dumbfounded. For Nicholas had now stopped explaining the objects each of which was described by a scroll anyway. And now i was free to roam virtually at random amid that display of priceless wonders. At times admiring things in full light

At times glimpsing them in semi darkness. As Nicholas’s helpers moved to another part of the crypt with their torches. I was fascinated by those yellowed bits of cartilage mystical and revolting at the same time. Transparent and mysterious. By those shreds of clothing from some immemorial age faded threadbare sometimes

Rolled up in a file like a faded manuscript. By those crumbled materials mingling with the fabric that was their bed. Holy jetsam of alive once animal and rational and now imprisoned in constructions of crystal or of metal that in their minuscule size mind the boldness of stone cathedrals with towers and turrets.

All seemed transformed into mineral substance as well. Is this then how the bodies of the saints buried await the resurrection of the flesh. From these shards would there be reconstructed those organisms that in the splendor of the beatific vision. Regaining their every natural sensitivity would sense. As proponents wrote.

Even the many must differentiate us adore him. William stared me from my meditations as he touched my shoulder. I’m going he said i’m going up to the scriptorium. I have yet something to consult. But it will be impossible to have any books i said benaud was given orders.

I have to reexamine only the books i was reading the other day. All are still in the scriptorium and finances his desk. You stay here if you like. The script as a beautiful epitome of the debates on poverty you have been following these past few days.

And now you know why your brother’s make mincemeat of one another as they aspire to the position of Abbot. But you believe what Nicholas implied. Or the crimes connected with a conflict over the investiture. I have already told you that for the present i don’t want to put any hypotheses into words.

Nicholas said many things and some interested me. But now i am going to follow yet another trail. Or perhaps the same but from a different direction. And don’t succumb too much to the spell of these cases I’ve seen many other fragments of the cross in other churches if all were genuine our

Lord’s torment could not have been on a couple of planks nailed together but done an entire forest. Master i said shocked. So it is and so. And there are even Richard treasuries. Some time ago in the cathedral of Cologne i saw the skull of John the baptist at the age of twelve. Really.

I exclaimed amazed. Then seized by doubt i added. But the baptist was executed at a more advanced age. The other skull must be in another treasury William said with a grave face. I never understood when he was jesting. In my country when you joke you say something and then

You laugh very noisily so everyone shares in the joke. But William laughed only when he said serious things and remained very serious when he was presumably joking. Terse. In which ad so listening to the da theory. As a dream or vision howsoever you may choose to define it.

William took his leave of Nicholas and went up to the scriptorium. By now i had seen my fill of the treasure and decided to go into the church and pray for maliki’s soul. I had never loved that man who frightened me

And i will not deny that for a long time i believed him guilty of all the crimes. But now i had learned that he was perhaps a poor wretch oppressed by unfulfilled passions. An earthenware vessel among vessels of iron. Surly because bewildered silent and evasive because conscious he had nothing to say.

I felt a certain re morse toward him and i thought that praying for his supernatural destiny might allay my feelings of guilt. The church was now illuminated by a faint and livid glow dominated by the poor man’s corpse and inhabited by the monotone murmur of the monks reciting the office of the dead.

In the monastery of melk i had several times witnessed the brothers to cease. It was not what i would call a happy occasion. But still it seemed to me serene governed by calm and by a sense of rightness. The monks took turns in the dying man’s so comforting him with good words

And each in his heart considered how the dying man was fortune but because he was about to conclude a virtuous life and would soon join the choir of angels in that bliss without end. And the part of this Serenity the odor of that pious envy. Was conveyed to the dying man

Who in the end died serenely. How different the deaths of the past few days. Finally i had seen at close hand how a victim of the diabolical scorpions of the Phineas Africa died and certainly been anxious and barren guard also died like that seeking relief in water.

Their faces already wasted as maliki’s had been. I sat at the back of the church huddled down to combat the chill. As i felt a bit of warmth. I moved my lips to join the chorus of the praying brothers. I followed them almost without being aware of what my lips were saying.

While my head nodded and my eyes wanted to close. Long minutes went by. I believe i fell asleep and woke up at least three or four times. Then the choir began to chant the da theory. The chanting affected me like a narcotic. I went completely to sleep. Or perhaps rather than slumber

I fell into an exhausted agitated does. Bent double like an infant still in its mother’s womb. And in that fog of the soul. Finding myself as if in a region not of this world i had a vision or dream if you prefer to call it that.

I was descending some narrow steps into a low passage as if i were entering the treasure crypt. But continuing to descend i arrived in a broader crypt which was the kitchen of the eat official. It was certainly the kitchen

But there was a bustle among not only ovens and parts but also bellows and hammers. As if Nicholas’s Smith said assembled there as well. Everything glowed red from the stoves and cauldrons and boiling pots gave off steam while huge bubbles Rose to their surfaces and popped suddenly with a dull repeated sound.

The cook’s turn spits in the air as the novices who had all gathered leapt up to snatch the chickens and the other foul impaled on those red hot irons. But nearby the smiths hammered so powerfully that the whole air was deafened and clouds of sparks Rose from the anvils

Mingling with those belching from the two ovens. I could not understand whether i was in hell or in such a paradise as Salvatore might have conceived dripping with juices and throbbing with sausages. But i had no time to wonder where i was because in rushed a swarm of little men.

Dwarfs with huge pot shaped heads. Sweeping me away they thrust me to the threshold of the refectory you’re forcing me to enter. The hall was bedecked for a feast. Great tapestries and banners hung on the walls but the images adorning them were not those usually displayed for the edification of the faithful

Or the celebration of the glories of kings. They seemed inspired on the contrary by a delmas marginalia. And they reproduced his less awful and more comical images. Hairs dancing around the tree of plenty. Rivers filled with fish that flung themselves spontaneously into frying pan filled out by monkeys dressed as cook bishops.

Monsters with fat bellies skipping around steaming kettles. In the center of the table was the Abbot in feast day dress with a great vestment of embroidered purple holding his fork like a scepter. Beside him Jorge drank from a great mug of wine and remedial dressed like Bernard yee

Held a book shaped like a scorpion. Virtuously reading the lives of the saints and passages from the gospels but they were stories about Jesus joking with the apostle. Reminding him that he was a stone and on that shameless stone that rolled over the plane he would build his church.

Or the story of st Jerome commenting on the Bible and saying that god wanted to bear Jerusalem’s behind. And at every sentence the seller or read Jorge laughed pounded his fist on the table and shouted you shall be the next abbott by god’s belly.

Those were his very words may the lord forgive me. At a Mary signal from the Abbot the procession of virgins entered it was a radiant line of richly dressed females in whose midst i thought at first i could discern my mother. Then i realized my error because it was certainly

The maiden terrible as an army with banners. Except that she wore a crown of white pearls on her head. A day double strand and two cascades of pearls fell on either side of her face mingling with two other rows which hung on her bosom

And from each Pearl and diamond as big as a plan. Further from both ears to send it rows of blue pearls which joined to become a choker at the base of her neck white and erected a tower of Lebanon. The cloak was murex colored and in her hand she had a diamond studded

Golden goblet in which i knew i cannot say how was contained the lethal england one day stolen from several rinus. This woman fair as the dawn was followed by other female forms. One was closed in a white embroidered mantle over a dark dress adorned with a double stall of gold

Embroidered in wild flowers. The second wore a cloak of yellow damask on a pale pink dress dotted with green leaves and was too great spun squares in the form of a dark labyrinth it’s. And the third had an emerald dress interwoven with little red animals

And she bore in her hands a white embroidered stole. I did not observe the clothing of the others. Because i was trying to understand who they were to be accompanying the maiden who now resembled the virgin Mary. And as if each bore in her hand a scroll.

Or as if a scroll came from each woman’s mouth mouth i knew they were Ruth Sarah susannah and other women of scripture. At this point the Abbot cried come on in you whore sons and into the refectory came another array of sacred personages in austere and splendid dress. Whom i recognized clearly.

And in the center of the group was one seated on a throne who was our lord but at the same time he was Adam dressed in a purple cloak with a great diadem. Red and white with rubies and pearls holding the cloak on his shoulders

And on his head a crown similar to the maidens in his hand a larger goblet brimming with pig’s blood. Other most holy personages of whom i will speak all familiar to me surrounded him along with a host of the king of France his archers dressed at which point the Abbot said.

Are a premium except among the quarter and all chanted infinite bulls Africa are men. Then all steady ruined. When the two facing hosts said thus dispersed at an order from abbott Solomon. The tables began to be laid. James and Andrew brought a bale of hay. Adam settled himself in the center

Eve lay down on a leaf. Kane and her dragging a plow Abel came with a pale to milk brunel as. Noah made a triumphal entry rowing the ark. Abraham sat under a tree. Isaac lay on the gold altar of the church. Moses crouched on a stone.

Daniel appeared on a cat a falk in maliki’s arms. Tobias stretched out on a bed. Joseph threw himself on a bushel. Benjamin reclined on a sack and there were others so still but here the vision grew confused. David stood on a mound John on the floor farrow on the sand.

Naturally i said to myself but why. Lazarus on the table Jesus on the edge of the well. Zacchaeus on the bows of a tree Matthew on a stool. Rob of unstable Ruth on straw. Sackler on the window sill. From outside and almost pale face appeared

As he warned her it was possible to fall down down the cliff. Susannah in the garden. Judas among the graves Peter on the throne James on a net. Elias on a saddle Rachel on a bundle. And Paul the apostle putting down his sword listened to esau complain

While job moaned on the dung heap and Rebecca rushed to his aid with a garment and Judas with a blanket hagar with a shroud. And some novices carried a large steaming pot from which leaped to the naches of southern mech or red as he began to distribute pig’s blood puddings.

The refectory was now becoming more and more crowded and all were eating at full tilt. Jonas brought some goods to the table as as and vegetables Ezekiel blackberries zacchaeus sycamore flowers. Adam lemons Daniel lupins pharaoh peppers Kane cartoons. Eve figs Rachel apples and and ayers some plums as big as diamonds.

Leia onions ns Aaron olives. Joseph and egg. Noah grapes simeon peach pits. While Jesus was singing the deer theory and gaily pored over all the dishes some vinegar that he squeezed from a little sponge he had taken from the spear of one of the king of France’s archers.

At this point Jorge having removed his vitra ad la agenda m lighted a burning bush. Sarah had provided kindling for it. Jephthah had brought it Isaac had unloaded it. Joseph had carved it and while Jacob opened the well and Daniel sat down beside the lake the servants brought water. Know a wine

Hager a wine skin Abram ham a calf that Rob tied to a stake while Jesus held out the rope and Elijah bound it’s feet. Then absalom hung him by his hair Peter held out his sword cane killed him herod shed his blood. Shen threw away his giblets and done. Jacob added the oil.

Molested on the salt. And tigers put him on the fire Rebecca cooked him and Eve first tasted him and was taken sick. But Adam said not to give it a thought and slapped several rinus on the back as he suggested adding aromatic herbs. Then Jesus broke the bread and passed around some fishes

Jacob shouted because he saw i’d eaten all the pottage. Isaac was devouring a roast kid and Jonah a boiled whale and Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights. Meanwhile all came in and out bringing choice game of every shape and color.

Of which Benjamin always kept the biggest chair and marry the choicest morsel while Martha complained of always having to wash the dishes. Then they divided up the caf which had meanwhile grown very big and John was given the head. Of vessel in the brain and the tongue Sampson the jaw. Peter the ear

All the furniture the head. Lear the rump saw the neck Jonah the belly Tobias the goal Eve the rib. Marry the breast. Elizabeth the vulva Moses the tail tail lot the legs and Ezekiel the bones. All the while Jesus was devouring a donkey Saint Francis a wolf able alam Eva moray.

The baptist a locust pharaoh an octopus. Naturally i said to myself but why. And David was eating Spanish fly flinging himself on the maidan nigra said formosa. While Samson bit into a lion’s behind and thecla fled screaming pursued by a hairy black spider. All were obviously drunk by now

And some slipped on the wine some fell into the jars with only their legs sticking out crossed like two steaks and all of Jesus’s fingers were black as he handed out pages of books saying take this and eat these are the riddles of synthesis

Including the one about the fish that is the son of god and your savior. Sprawled on his back Adam gulped and the wine came from his rib Noah cursed ham in his sleep. All the furniture snored all unsuspecting Jonas slept soundly. Peter kept watch till cockrell and Jesus woke with a start

Hearing Bernard yee and bertrand del progetto plotting to burn the maiden and he shouted. Father if it be thy will let this chalice pass from me. And some poured badly and some drank well some died laughing and some laughed dying. Some bore vases and some drank from another’s cup.

Susannah shouted that she would never Grant her beautiful white body to the celery and to Salvatore for a miserable beefheart. Pilot wandered around the refectory like a lost soul asking for water to wash his hands. And fraud chino with his plumed hat. Brought the water then opened his garments snickering

And displayed his pretender red with blood. While Cain taunted him and embraced the beautiful Margaret of Trent. And otieno fell to weeping and went to rest with his head on the shoulder of Bernard g calling him angelic pope. Who bettino consoled him with a tree of life

Michael of cesena with a gold purse. The marries sprinkled in with annoyance and Adam convinced him to bite into a fresh plucked apple. And then the vaults of the defeat hume opened and from the heavens descended Roger bacon on a flying machine when you go home in a regent day.

Then David played his lyre salami danced with her seven veils and at the fall of each veil she blew one of the seven trumpets and showed one of the seven seals. Until only the amick du soleil remained. As one said there had never been such a jolly Abby

And baron guard pulled up everyone’s habit man and woman kissing them all on the anus. Then it was that the Abbot flew into a rage because he said he had organised such a lovely feast and nobody was giving him anything. So they all out did one another and bringing him gifts and treasures.

A bull a lamb a lion a camel a stag a calf a mere. A chariot of the sun. The chin of st David banner’s. The tale of st to bettina. The uterus of st financial. The neck of st burger sina and grabbed like a goblet at the age of twelve.

A copy of the pente Dunham Santa manas. But the Abbot started yelling that they were trying to distract his attention with their behavior and in fact. They were looting the treasure crypt where we all were and the most precious book had been stolen which spoke of scorpions and the seven trumpets.

And he called the king of France’s archers to search all the suspects. And to everyone shame the archers found a multicolored cloth on hagar a gold seal and Rachel a silver mirror and thankless bosom. A siphon under Benjamin’s arm. As silk coverlet among Judith’s clothes. A spear and lawn geniuses hand

And a neighbor’s wife in the arms of abimelech. But the worst was when they found a black rooster on the girl black and beautiful she was like the cat of the same color and they called her a witch and a pseudo apostle so all flung themselves on her to punisher.

The baptist decapitated her able cut her open Adam drove her out nebuchadnezzar wrote the dial signs on her breast with a fiery hand. Elijah carried her off in a fiery chariot. Noah plunged her in water la changed her into a pillar of salt. Susanna accused her of lust.

Joseph betrayed her with another woman and an Iris stuck her into a furnace. Sampson chained her up Paul flagellated her Peter crucified her head down. Stephen stoned her Laurence burned her on a great. Bartholomew skinned her Judas denounced her the cellar or burned her and Peter denied everything.

Then they all were on that head flinging excrement on her fighting in her face urinating on her head. Vomiting on her bosom tearing out her hair whipping her buttocks with glowing torches. The girl’s body was so beautiful and sweet was now lacerated torn into fragments that

Were scattered among the glass cases and golden crystal reliquaries of the crypt. Or rather it was not the body of the girl that went to fill the crypt it was the fragments of the crypt that whirling gradually compose to form the girl’s body now something mineral and then again decomposed and scattered.

Sacred dust of segments accumulated by insane blasphemy. It was now as if a single immense body had in the course of millennia dissolved into it’s parts and these parts had been arranged to occupy the whole crypt more splendid than the awesome of the dead monks but not unlike it.

And as if the substantial form of man’s very body the masterpiece of creation had shattered into plural and separate accidental fall arms thus becoming the image of it’s own opposite form no longer ideal but earthly of dust and stinking fragments capable of signifying only death and destruction.

Now i could no longer find the banquet hers or the gifts they had brought. It was as if all the guests of the symposium were now on the crypt each mummified in it’s own residue. Each the diaphanous sinek the key of itself. Rachel as a bone Daniel as a tooth.

Sampson is a jaw Jesus as a shred of purple garment. As if at the end of the banquet the feast transformed into the girls slaughter it had become the universal slaughter and here i was seeing it’s final result the bodies. Know the whole terrestrial and sub lunar body

Of those ravenous and thirsting feaster is. Transformed into a single dead body lacerated and tormented like the chinos body after his torture. Transformed into a loathsome and resplendent treasure. Stretched out to it’s full extent like the hide of a skinned and hung animal which still contained

However petrified the leather sinews the viscera and all the organs and even the features of the face. The skin with each of it’s folds wrinkles and scars with it’s velvety planes it’s forest of hairs. The dermis the bosom the pretender having become a sumptuous damask

And the breasts the nails the horny formations under the heel. The threads of the lashes the watery substance of the eyes the flesh of the lips the thin spine of the back. The architecture of the bones everything reduced to Sandy powder. Though nothing had lost its own for more respective placement.

The legs emptied and limp as a boot their flesh lying flat like a chazal with all the Scarlet embroidery of the veins. The engraved pile of the viscera. The intense and mucous Ruby of the heart. The pearly file of even teeth arranged like a necklace. With a tongue as. Independent.

The fingers in a row like tapers. The seal of the naval re knotting the threads of the enrolled carpet of the belly. From every corner of the crypt now i was grinned at whispered to bitten to death by this macro body divided among glass cases and reliquaries

And yet reconstructed in it’s vast and irrational hole. And it was the same body that at the supper had eaten and tumbled obscenely but here instead. Appeared to me fixed in the tangibility of its deaf and blind ruin.

Andrew bettino seizing me by the arm digging his nails into my flesh whispered to me you see it is the same thing what first triumphed in it’s folly and took delight in it’s jesting now is here punished and rewarded liberated from the seduction of the passions rich defied by eternity

Consigned to the eternal frost that is to preserve and purify it. Saved from corruption through the triumph of corruption because nothing more can reduced to dust that which is already dust and mineral substance. More zest creates the authoress finish his tone nice laborious. But suddenly Salvatore entered the crypt.

Glowing like a devil and cried for can’t you see this is the great lyotard. What are you afraid of my little master here is the cheese in batter. And suddenly the crypt was bright with reddish flashes

And it was again the kitchen but not so much a kitchen as the inside of a great womb mucus and viscous. And in the center an animal black as a raven and with a thousand hands was chained to a huge great and it extended those limbs to snatch everybody around it.

And as the peasant when thirsty squeezes a bunch of grapes so that great beast squeeze those that had snatched. So that it’s hands broke them all the legs of some from the heads of others and then it stated itself belching a fire that seemed distinct more than sulfur.

But wondrous mystery that see no longer instilled fear in me and i was surprised to see that i could watch easily that good devil so i thought. Who after all was none other than Salvatore because now i knew all about the mortal human body its sufferings and it’s corruption

And i feared nothing more. In fact in the light of that flame now seemed mild and convivial i saw again all the guests of the supper now restored to their original forms singing and declaring that everything was beginning again and among them was the maiden hole and most beautiful who said to me

It is nothing it is nothing you will see. I shall be even more beautiful than before. Just let me go for a moment and burn on the pyre. Then we shall meet again here. And she displayed to me god have mercy on me her vulva into which i entered

And i found myself in a beautiful cave which seemed the happy valley of the golden age. Dewy with waters and fruits and trees that bore cheeses and better. And all were thanking the Abbot for the lovely feast. They showed him there our affection and good humor

By pushing him kicking him tearing his clothes laying him on the ground striking his rod with rods. As he laughed and begged them to stop tickling him. And riding mounts whose nostrils emitted clouds of brimstone the friars of the poor life entered carrying at their belts purses full of gold with which

They transformed wolves into law rams and lambs into wolves and ground them emperor with the approval of the assembly of the people who sang praises of god’s infinite omnipotence. Oot cockiness de salva tour. Tour choir tour riki boosie. Jesus shouted waving his crown of thorns. Pope John came in

Cursing the confusion and saying and straight i don’t know where it will all end. But everyone mocked him and led by the Abbot went out with the pigs to hunt truffles in the forest. I was about to follow them when in a corner i saw William emerging from the labyrinth

And carrying in his hand the magnet which pulled him rapidly northward. Do not leave me mass after i shouted i too want to see what is in the Phineas Africa. You have already seen it William answered far away by now.

And i woke up as the last words of the funeral chant were ending in the church. Luxury Mercedes sealer. Cwa research at x favela. You did conduce homo reus. Week ergo parte de los. Pa yeas or dominee dona eis requiem. A sign that my vision rapid like all visions.

If it had not lasted the space of an amen as the saying goes had lasted almost the length of a dear Siri. After terse. In which William explains answers dream to him. Dazed i came out through the main door and discovered a little crowd there.

The franciscans were leaving and William had come down to say goodbye to them. I joined in the farewells the fraternal embraces. Then i asked William when the others would be leaving with the prisoners. He told me they had already left half an hour before while we were in the treasure crypt

Or perhaps i thought when i was dreaming. For a moment i was aghast then i recovered myself. Better so. I would not have been able to bear the sight of the condemned. I meant the poor wretched cellar and Salvatore and of course i also met the girl.

Being dragged off far away and forever. And besides i was still so upset by my dream that my feelings seemed numb. As the caravan of minor rides headed for the gate to leave the Abbey William and i remained in front of the church both melancholy though for different reasons.

Then i decided to tell my master my dream. Though the vision had been multiform and illogical. I remembered it with amazing clarity image by image action by action word by word. And so i narrated it omitting nothing. Because i knew that dreams are often mysterious messages

In which learned people can read distinct prophecies. William listened to me in silence then asked me. Do you know what you had dreamed. Exactly what i told you i replied at a loss. Of course i realize that.

But do you know that to a great extent what you tell me has already been written. You have added people and events of these past few days to a picture already familiar to you because you have read the story of your dream somewhere

Or it was told you as a boy in school in the convent. It is the coziness of briony. I remained puzzled briefly then i remembered he was right. Perhaps i had forgotten the title but what adult monk or unruly young novice is not smiled or laughed over the various visions

In prose or rhyme of this story. Which belongs to the tradition of the Pascal season and the yocum on a corum. Though the work is banned or secreted by the more austere among novice masters. There is still not a convent in which the monks have not

Whispered to one another variously condensed and revised while some piously copied it. Declaring that behind the veil of mirth had concealed secret moral lessons and others encouraged it’s circulation because they said through it’s jesting the young could more easily commit them memory certain episodes of sacred history.

Averse version had been written for pope John the eighth with the inscription i loved to just. Accept me dear pope John in my jesting and if you wish you can also laugh. And it was said that Charles the bald himself had staged it.

In the guise of a comic sacred mystery in a rhymed version to entertain his dignitaries at supper. And how many scoldings had i received from my masters when with my companions i recited passages from it. I remembered an old fryer at melk who used to say that a virtuous man like cyprian

Could not have written such an indecent thing. Such as sacrilegious parody of scripture worthier of an infidel and a buffoon than of a holy martyr. For years i’d forgotten those childish jokes. Why on this day had the co-winner reappeared so vividly in my dream.

I had always thought the dreams were divine messages or at worst absurd stammering of the sleeping memory about things that had happened during the day. I was now realizing that one can also dream books. And therefore dream of dreams. I should like to be Autumn doors to interpret your dream correctly William said.

But it seems to me that even without artem indoors is learning it is easy to understand what happened. In these past days my poor boy you have experienced a series of events in which every upright rule seems to have been destroyed. And this morning and you’re sleeping mind

They returned the memory of a kind of comedy in which albeit with other intentions the world is described upside down. You inserted into that work your most recent memories your anxieties your fears. From the marginalia of a del mo he went on to relive a great carnival.

Where everything seems to proceed in the wrong direction. And yet as in the corner each does what he really did in life. And finally you asked yourself in the dream. Which world is the false one and what it means to walk head down.

Your dream no longer distinguished what is down and what is up. Where life is and where death. Your dream cast doubt on the teachings you have received. My dream i said virtuously not i. But dreams are not divine messages then they are diabolical ravings and they contain no truth.

I don’t know and so William said. We already have so many truths in our possession that if the day came when someone insisted on deriving a truth even from our dreams then the day of the antichrist would truly be at hand. And yet.

The more i think of your dream the more revealing it seems to me. Perhaps not to you but to me. Forgive me if i use your dreams in order to work out my hypotheses. I know it’s a base action that should not be done.

But i believe that your sleeping soul understood more things than i have in six days. And awake. Truly. Truly. Or perhaps not. I find your dream revealing because it coincides with one of my hypotheses. But you have given me great help thank you.

But what was there in my dream that interests you so much it made no sense like all dreams. Another sense like all dreams and visions. It must be read as an allegory or an analogy. Like scripture. A dream is a scripture and. Many scriptures are nothing but dreams. Sexed.

In which the succession of librarians is reconstructed and there is further information about the mysterious book. William decided to go back up to the scriptorium from which he had just come. He asked banners leave to consult the catalog and he leapt through it rapidly.

It must be around here he said i saw just an hour ago. He stopped at one page. Here he said read this title. As a single entry there was a group of four titles indicating that one volume contained several texts. I read. One arabic they did the squeezed stamps doughty.

Two syriac libellous alchemical Egypt. Three x y z t maggi story I’ll go free by the inner bharati cyprian a cottage and answers episcopate. For liebert a journalist is too precious virginal at mirror treacle memorials. What is it i asked. It is our book. William whispered to me.

This is why your dream reminded me of something. Now i am sure this is it. And in fact. He glanced quickly at the pages immediately preceding and following. In fact here are the books i was thinking about altogether. But this isn’t what i wanted to check. See here do you have your tablet.

Good. We must make a calculation and try to remember clearly what our dinardo told us the other day. As well as what we heard this morning from Nicholas. Now. Nicholas told us he arrived here about thirty years ago and abo had already been named Abbot.

The Abbot before him was Paul of rimini is that right. Let’s say this succession took place around twelve ninety more or less doesn’t matter. Nicholas also told us that when he arrived Robert bobo was already librarian correct. Then Robert died and the post was given to maliki

Let’s say at the beginning of this century. Write this down. There is a period however before Nicholas came when Paul of rimini was librarian. How long was he in that post. We were told. We could examine the Abbey ledgers but i imagine the Abbot has them and for the

Moment i would prefer not to ask him for them. But suppose Paul was appointed librarian sixty years ago. Right that. Why does that linaro complain of the fact that about fifty years ago he should have been given the post of librarian and instead it went to another.

Was he referring to Paul of rimini. Or to Robert a mobile i said. So it would seem. But now look at this catalog. As you know the titles are recorded in the order of acquisition. And who writes them in this ledger. The librarian.

Therefore by the changes of handwriting in these pages we can establish the succession of librarians. Now we will look at the catalog from the end. The last handwriting is maliki susie and it feels only a few pages. The Abbey has not acquired many books in his last few years.

Then as we work backward a series of pages begins in a shaky hand. I clearly read the presence of Robert a Bobby who was ill. Robert probably did occupy that position long. And then what do we find. Pages and pages in another hand straightened confident a whole series of acquisitions

Including the group of books i was examining a moment ago. Truly impressive. Fall of rimini must have worked hard. Too hard if you recall that Nicholas told us he became Abbot while still a young man. But let’s assume that in a few years this voracious reader enrich the Abbey with so many books.

Weren’t we told he was called. Abus a graphic is because of that strange defect or illness which made him unable to write. Then who wrote these pages. Is assistant librarian i would say. But if by chance this assistant librarian were then named librarian he would have then continued writing

And we would have figured out why there are so many pages here in the same hand. So then. Between Paul and Robert. We would have another librarian chosen fifty years ago who was the mysterious rival of Ali nardo who was who hoping as an older man to succeed Paul. When this man died

And somehow contrary to Allen artists expectations and the expectations of others Robert was named in his place. But why are you so sure this is the writes kanchan even granting that this handwriting is the nameless librarians why couldn’t Paul also have written the titles of the still earlier pages.

Because among the acquisitions they recorded all bulls and the cradles and these are precisely dated. I mean if you find here as you do the. Firm a councillor of bonavista seven stated twelve ninety six. You know that text did not arrive before they appear and you can assume it didn’t arrive much later.

I have these milestones so to speak placed along the years so if i granted Paul of rimini became librarian in twelve sixty five and abbott in twelve seventy five. And i find that this hand or the hand of someone else who is not Robert a Bobby or

Lasts from twelve sixty five to twelve eighty five. Then i discover a discrepancy of ten years. My master was truly very sharp. But what conclusions do you draw from this discrepancy i asked. None he answered only some premises.

Then he got up and went to talk with benaud who was staunchly at his post but with a very unsure air. He was still behind his old desk and had not dared to take over maliki’s by the catalogue. William addressed him with some coolness.

We had not forgotten the unpleasant scene of the previous evening. Even in your new and powerful position brother library and i trust you will answer a question. That morning when a demo and the others were talking here about witty riddles and baron guy made the first reference to the finest Africa

Did anybody mentioned that Cohen is the brioni. Yes benaud said didn’t i tell you. Before they talked about the riddles of some focus. Finances himself mentioned the coroner and maliki became furious saying it was an ignoble work and reminding us that the Abbot had forbidden anyone to read it. The Abbot William said.

Very interesting thank you Ben oh. Wait benno said. I want to talk with you. Emotion has to follow him out of the scriptorium onto the stairs going down to the kitchen so the others could not hear him. His lips were trembling. I’m frightened William he said. They’ve killed maliki.

Now i’m the one who knows too many things. Besides the group of Italians hate me. They do not want another foreign librarian. I believe the others were murdered for this very reason. I’ve never told you about our Leonardo’s hatred for maliki is bitterness.

Who was it who took the post from him years ago. That i don’t know he always talks about it vaguely and any way it’s ancient history. They must all be dead now. But the group of Italians around ala nardo speaks often. Spoke often of maliki as a straw man.

Put here by someone else with the complicity of the Abbot. Not realizing it i. I have become involved in the conflict of the two hostile factions. I became aware of it only this morning. Italy is a land of conspiracies they poisoned popes here so just imagine a poor boy like me.

Yesterday i hadn’t understood i believed that book was responsible for everything but now i’m no longer sure. That was the pretext. You’ve seen that the book was found but maliki died all the same. I must. I i want to. I would like to run away. What do you advise me to do.

Stay calm. Now you ask advice to you. Yesterday evening you seemed ruler of the world silly youth if you’d helped me yesterday we could have prevented this last crime. You are the one who gave maliki the book that brought him to his death. But tell me one thing at least.

You have that book in your hands did you touch it read it. Then why are you not dead. I don’t know i swear i didn’t touch it. Or rather i i touched it when i took it in the laboratory but without opening it. I hit it inside my habit

Then went and put it under the pallet in my cell. I knew maliki was watching me so i came back at once to the scriptorium. And afterward when maliki offered to make me his assistant i gave him the book that’s the whole story. Don’t tell me you didn’t even open it.

Yes i did open it before hiding it to make sure it really was the one you are also looking for. It began with an arabic manuscript. Then i believe one in syriac. Then there was a Latin text and finally one in Greek. I remembered the abbreviations we had seen in the catalog

The first two titles were listed as a r and s y r. It was the book. But William persisted. You touched it and you are not dead so touching it does not kill. And what can you tell me about the Greek text did you look at it. Very briefly

Just long enough to realize it had no title it began as if a part were missing. Liberal capitalists will he murmured. I tried to read the first page but the truth is that my Greek is very poor. And then my curiosity was aroused by another detail connected with those same pages in Greek.

I did not leave through all of them because i was unable to the pages where. How can i explain damp stuck together. It was hard to separate one from the other. Because the parchment was odd. Softer than other parchments and the first page was rotten and almost crumbling it was. Well strange. Strange.

The very words of rinus used William said. The parchment did not seem like parchment it seemed like cloth but very fine. Then i went on. Antolin tail or linen paper William said. Had you never seen it. I’d heard of it but i don’t believe i ever saw it before.

It is said to be very costly and delicate. That’s why it is rarely used. The arabs make it don’t they. They were the first but it is also made here in Italy at fabriano and also. Why of course. Naturally. Williams eyes shown.

What a beautiful and interesting revelation good for you benaud i thank you. Yes i imagine that here in the library continent area must be rare because no very recent manuscripts have arrived. And besides many are afraid linen paper will not survive through the centuries like parchment and perhaps that is true.

Let us imagine if they wanted something here that was not more perennial than bronze. Huddle entire then. Very well good bye and don’t worry. You’re in no danger. We went away from the scriptorium leaving Ben o’Connor if not totally reassured. The Abbot was in the refectory

William went to him and asked to speak with him. Abo unable to temporize agreed to meet us in a short while at his house. Knowns. In which the Abbot refuses to listen to William discourses on the language of gems and expresses a wish that there be no further

Investigation of the recent unhappy events. The abbott’s apartments were over the chapter hall and from the window of the large and sumptuous main room where he received us you could see on that clear and windy day. Beyond the roof of the herbaceous church. The massive either fission.

The Abbot standing at the window was in fact contemplating it and he pointed it out to us with a solemn gesture. An admirable fortress he said. Whose proportions sum up the golden rule that governed the construction of the arc. Divide into three stories because three is the number of the Trinity.

Three where the angels who visited Abraham the days Jonah spent in the belly of the great fish and the days Jesus and Lazarus passed in the sepulchre. Three times Christ asked the father to let the bitter chalice pass from him and three times he hid himself to pray with the apostles.

Three times Peter denied him and three times Christ appeared to his disciples after the resurrection. The theological virtues are three and three are the holy languages the parts of the soul the classes of intellectual creatures. Angels men and devils. There are three kinds of sound. Box splatters puzzles and three epics of

Human history before during and after the law. A wondrous Harmony of mystical relations William agreed. But the square shape also. The Abbot continued is rich in spiritual lessons. The cardinal points are four and the seasons the elements and heat cold wet and dry. Birth growth maturity and old age the species of animals

Celestial terrestrial aerial and aquatic. The colors forming the rainbow and the number of years required to make a leap year. Or to be sure William said and three plus four is seven a superlatively mystical number. Whereas three multiplied by four makes twelve like the apostles and twelve by twelve makes one hundred and

Forty four which is the number of the elect. Until this last display of mystical knowledge of the ideal world of numbers the Abbot had nothing further to add thus William could come to the point. We must talk about the latest events on which i have reflected at length he said.

The Abbot turned his back to the window and looked straight at William with a stern face. A to great length perhaps. I must confess brother William that i expected more of you. Almost six days have passed since you arrived here. Four monks have died beside the del mo

To have been arrested by the inquisition it was justice to be sure but we could have avoided the shame. If the inquisitor had not been obliged to concern himself with the previous crimes. And finally the meeting over which i presided has. Precisely because of all these wicked deeds had a pitiful outcome.

William remained silent embarrassed. Without question the Abbot was right. That is true he admitted. I have not lived up to your expectations but i will explain why your sublimity. These crimes do not stem from abroad or from some vendetta among the monks.

But from deeds that in their turn originate in the remote history of the Abbey. The Abbot looked at him uneasily. What do you mean. I myself realized that the key is not that miserable affair of the celery which is intersected another story.

But the other that other which i may know but cannot discuss. I hoped it was clear and that you would speak to me about it. Your sublimity is thinking of some deed he learned about in confession. The Abbot looked away and William continued. If your magnificence wants to know whether i know

Without having learned it from your magnificence. That there were illicit relations between barren garden the dunmow. Between baron gone maliki. Whoa yes everyone in the Abbey knows this. The Abbot blushed violently. I do not believe it useful to speak of such things in the presence of this novice

And i do not believe now that the meeting is over that you need him any longer ascribe. Go boy he said to me imperiously. Humiliated i went but in my curiosity i crouched outside the door of the hall which i left ajar so that i could follow the dialogue. William resumed speaking.

So then these illicit relations if they did take place had scant influence on the painful events. The key is elsewhere as i thought you imagined. Everything turns on the theft and possession of a book which was concealed in the finest Africa and which is now there again thanks to maliki’s intervention

Though as you have seen the sequence of crimes was not thereby arrested. A long silence followed. Then the Abbot resumed speaking in a broken hesitant voice like some one taken aback by unexpected revelations. This is impossible you. How how do you know about the finest Africa.

Have you violated my ban and entered the library. William ought to have told the truth but the abbott’s rage would have known no bounds yet obviously my master did not want to lie. He chose to answer the question with another question. Did your magnificence not say to me at our first meeting.

That a man like me who had described brunello so well without ever having seen him would have no difficulty picturing places to which he did not have access. So that is it. Ever said. But why do you think what you think. How i arrived at my conclusion is too long a story.

But a series of crimes was committed to prevent many from discovering something that it was considered undesirable for them to discover. Now all those who knew something of the library’s secrets whether rightly or through trickery are dead. Only one person remains. Yourself. Do you wish to insinuate. You wish to insinuate.

The Abbot said. Do not misunderstand me said William who probably had indeed wish to insinuate. I say there is someone who knows and wants no one else to know. As the last to know you could be the next victim.

Unless you tell me what you know about that forbidden book and especially who when the Abbey might know what you know and perhaps more about the library. It’s cold in here. The Abbot said. Let us go out.

I moved rapidly away from the door and waited for them at the head of the stairs the Abbot saw me and smiled at me. How many upsetting things this young monk must have heard in the past few days. Convoy do not allow yourself to be too distressed. It seems to me that

More plots have been imagined than really exist. He raised one hand and allowed the daylight to illuminate a splendid ring he wore on his fourth finger the emblem of his power. The ring sparkled with all the brilliance of it’s stones. You recognize it do you not he said to me.

The symbol of my authority but also of my burden. It is not an ornament it is a splendid synergy of the divine word whose guardian i am. With his fingers he touched the stone or rather the arrangement of variegated stones composing that admirable masterpiece of human art and nature. This is amethyst

He said. Which is the mirror of humility and reminds us of the ingenuous Nissan sweetness of st Matthew. This is. How seventy Mark of charity symbol of the piety of Joseph and st James the greater. This is Jasper which bespeaks faith and is associated with st Peter. And sardonic ce sign of martyrdom.

Which recalls st Bartholomew. This is sapphire hope and contemplation the stone of st Andrew and st Paul. And barrel sound doctrine learning and longer limiting the virtues of st Thomas. How splendid the language of gems is. He went on lost in his mystical vision.

Which the laboratories of tradition have translated from the reasoning of Erin and the description of the heavenly Jerusalem in the book of the apostle. For that matter the walls of Zion were decked with the same jewels that decorated the pectoral of Moses his brother except for carbuncle agate and onyx which

Mentioned in exodus are replaced in the apocalypse by Karl Sydney’s aardonyx chrysoprase and jacinth. He moved the ring and dazzled my eyes with it’s sparkling as if he wanted to stand me. Marvelous language is it not. For other fathers stones signify still other things.

For pope innocent the third the Ruby announced calm and Patience the garnet charity. For st Bruno aquamarine concentrates. The learning and the virtue of its purest raise. Turquoise signifies joy. Sardonic ce suggests the Sarah him. Topaz the cherubim. Jasper thrones. Crystallite dominions sapphire the virtues annex the powers. Barrel principalities Ruby are archangels.

And emerald angels. The language of gems is multiform each expresses several truths according to the sense of the selected interpretation according to the context in which they appear. And who decides what is the level of interpretation and what is the proper context. You know my boy for they have taught you.

It is authority. The most reliable commentator of all and the most invested with prestige and therefore with sanctity. Otherwise how to interpret the multiple signs that the world sets before us in his eyes. How to avoid the misunderstandings into which the devil lures us. Mind you

It is extraordinary how the devil hates the language of gems as st hildegard testifies. The foul beast season at a message illuminated by different meanings or levels of knowledge and he would like to destroy it because he. The enemy senses in the splendor of stones the echo

Of the marvels in his possession before his fall and he understands that this radiance is produced by fire which is his torment. He held out the ring for me to kiss and i knelt he stroked my head. And so my boy you must forget the things no

Doubt erroneous that you have heard these days. You have entered the noblest the greatest order of all. Of this order i am an Abbot and you are under my jurisdiction. Hear my command forget and may your lips be sealed forever. Swear. Moved subjugated i would certainly have sworn.

And you my good reader would not be able now to read this faithful chronicle of mine. What does the boy have to do with it i asked you a question i warned you of a danger i asked you to tell me your name.

Do you now wish me to to kiss the ring and swear to forget what i have learned or why but i suspect. Ah you. The Abbot said sadly. I do not expect a mendicant friar to understand the beauty of our traditions or respect the reticence the secrets the mysteries of charity. Yes charity

And the sense of honor and the vow of silence on which our greatness is based. You have spoken to me of a strange story an incredible story. About a banned book that has caused a chain of murders. About someone who knows what only i should know. Tails meaningless accusations.

Speak of it if you wish no one will believe you and even if some element of your fanciful reconstruction were true. Well now everything is once more under my control my jurisdiction. I will look into this i have the means i have the authority. At the very beginning i made a mistake

Asking an outsider however wise however worthy of trust to investigate things that are my responsibility alone. But you understand as you have told me. I believed at the outset that it involved a violation of the vow of chastity and.

Imprudent as i was i wanted someone else to tell me what i had heard in conf fashion. Well now you have told me. I am very grateful to you for what you have done or have tried to do. The meeting of delegations has taken place your mission here is over.

I imagine you are anxiously awaited at the imperial court. One does not deprive oneself at length of a man like you. I give you permission to leave the Abbey. Today it is perhaps late. I do not want you to travel after sunset for the roads are not safe.

You will leave tomorrow morning early. Oh do not thank me it has been a joy to have you here a brother among brothers. Honoring you with our hospitality. You may withdraw now with your numbers to prepare your baggage i will say goodbye to you again tomorrow at dawn

I thank you with all my heart. Naturally it is not necessary for you to continue your investigations. Do not disturb the monks further you may go. It was more than a dismissal it was an expulsion. William said goodbye and we went down the stairs. What does this mean i asked.

I no longer understood anything. Tried to formulate a hypothesis you must have learned how it is done. Actually i have learned i must formulate at least two one in opposition to the other and both incredible. Very well then. I gulped formulating hypotheses made me nervous. First hypothesis the Abbot knew everything already

And imagined you would discover nothing. Second hypothesis. The Abbot never suspected anything about what i don’t know because i don’t know what’s in your mind. But anyhow he went on thinking it was all because of a quarrel between. Between sodomized monks. Now however you have opened his eyes

He has suddenly understood something terrible has thought of a name. Has a precise idea about who is responsible for the crimes. But at this point he wants to resolve the matter by himself and wants to be rid of you in order to save the honor of the Abbey. Good work.

You are beginning to reason well. But you see already that in both cases our ebert is concerned for the good name of his monastery. Murderer or next victim as he may be he does not want defamatory news about this holy community to travel beyond these mountains. Kill his monks

But do not touch the honor of his Abbey. Hub by. William was now becoming infuriated. That bastard of a feudal lord that peacock who gained fame for having been the aquinas his grave digger. That inflated wine skin who exists only because he wears a ring as big as the bottom of a glass.

Proud proud all of your Clooney acts worse than prince’s more baronial than barons. Master i ventured hurt in a reproachful tone. You will be quiet you are made of the same stuff. Your band are not simple men or sons of the simple.

If a peasant comes along you may receive him but as i saw yesterday you do not hesitate to hand him over to the secular arm. But not one of your own no he must be shielded. Abo is capable of identifying the wretch

Stabbing him in the treasure crypt and passing out his kidneys among the reliquaries provided the honor of the Abbey is saved. Have a franciscan a plebeian minor right discover the rat’s nest of this holy house ah no this is something abo cannot allow at any price.

Thank you brother William the emperor needs you you see what a beautiful ring i have good bye. But now the challenge is not just a matter between me and abo it is between me and the whole business. I am not leaving these walls until i have found out.

He wants me to leave tomorrow morning does he very well at his house but by tomorrow morning i must know i must. You must to oblige as you now. No one ever obliges us to know and so we must that is all. Even if we comprehend imperfectly.

I was still confused and humiliated by Williams’ words against my order and tablets and i tried to justify a bow in part formulating a third hypothesis. Exercising a skill at which it seemed to me i was becoming very dextrous. You have not considered a third possibility master i said.

We had noticed these past days and this morning it seemed quite clear to us after Nicholas his confidences and the rumors we heard in church. That there is a group of Italian monks reluctant to tolerate the succession of foreign librarians. They accused the Abbot of not respecting tradition

And as i understand it they hide behind old Ali nardo. Thrusting him forward like a standard to ask for a different government of the Abbey. So perhaps the Abbot fears are revelations could give his enemies a weapon and he wants to settle the question with great prudence. That is possible

But he is still an inflated wine skin and he will get himself killed. We were in the cloister the wind was growing angrier all the time the light dimmer even if it was just past knowns. The day was approaching it’s sunset and we had very little time left. It is late William said

And when a man has little time he must take care to maintain his calm. We must act as if we had eternity before us. I have a problem to solve. How to penetrate the finest Africa because the final answer must be there.

Then we must save some person i have not yet determined which. Final Lee we should expect something from the direction of the stables which you will keep an eye on. Look at all the bustle. In fact the space between the eater fishermen the cloister was unusually animated. A moment before

A novice coming from the Abbot’s house had run toward the division. Now Nicholas was coming out of it heading for the dormitories. In one corner that morning’s group pacifica’s amaro and Peter were deep in discussion with ala nardo as if trying to convince him of something thing.

Then they seemed to reach a decision. I morrow supported the still reluctant ala nardo and went with him toward the basal residents. They were just entering as Nicholas came out of the dormitory leading Jorge in the same direction. Seeing the two Italians enter he whispered something

Into her hazier and the old man shook his head. They continued however towards the chapter house. The Abbot is taking the situation in hand William murmured skeptically. From the edificio more emerging more monks who belonged in the scriptorium and they were immediately followed by benaud who came toward us more worried than ever.

There is unrest in the scriptorium he told us nobody is working they are all talking among themselves. What is happening. What’s happening is that the people who until this morning seemed the most suspect are all dead. Until yesterday everyone was on guard against baron gar foolish and treacherous and lascivious.

Then the seller a suspect heretic and finally maliki so generally disliked. Now they don’t know whom to be on guard against and they urgently. An enemy or a scapegoat. And each suspects the others. Some are afraid like you. Others have decided to frighten someone else. You are all too agitated.

And so take a look at the stables every now and then i’m going to get some rest. I should have been amazed. To go and rest when he had only a few hours left did not seem the wisest decision but by now i knew my master the more relaxed is by.

The more a Valiant his mind. Between vespers and compline in which long hours of bewilderment are briefly narrated. It is difficult for me to narrate what happened in the hours that followed between vespers and compline. William was absent. I roamed around the stables but noticed nothing abnormal

The grooms were bringing in the animals made nervous by the wind otherwise all was calm. I entered the church. Everyone was already in his place among the stalls but the Abbot noticed Jorge was absent. With a gesture he delayed the beginning of the office.

He called for benaud to dispatch him to look for the old man but benno was not there. Someone pointed out that he was probably making the scriptorium ready for it’s evening closing. The Abbot annoyed said it had been decided that benaud would close nothing because he did not know the rules.

I moral of Alexandria arose from his stall. If your paternity agrees i will go and summon him. No one asked anything of you the Abbot said curtly and i morrow sat back down in his place not without casting an inscrutable glance at pacifica’s of tivoli.

The Abbot called for Nicholas who was not present. Someone reminded him that Nicholas was preparing supper and the Abbot made a gesture of annoyance as if he were displeased revealed to all that he was upset. I want Jorge here he cried find him Hugo he ordered the master of novices.

Another pointed out to him that alley nardo was also missing. I know the Abbot said he is not well. I was near Peter of central bono and heard him say to his neighbor Gonzo of Nola in a vulgar dialect from central Italy which i partly understood. I should think so

Today when he came out after the colloquy the poor old man was distraught. Abo behaves like the horror of avignon. The novices were bewildered with their innocent boyish sensitivity they felt the tension raining enquire as i felt it. Long moments of silence and embarrassment ensued. The Abbot ordered some psalms to be recited

And he picked at random three that were not prescribed for vespers by the rule. All looked at one another then began praying and low voices. The novice master came back followed by benno who took his seat his head bowed. Jorge was not in the scriptorium or in his cell.

The Abbot commanded that the office begin. When it was over before everyone headed for supper i went to call William. He was stretched out on his palate dressed motionless. He said he had not realised it was so late i told him briefly what had happened he shook his head.

At the door of the refectory we saw Nicholas who a few hours earlier had been accompanying Jorge. William asked him whether the old man had gone immediately to see the Abbot. Nikola said Jorge had had to wait a long time outside the door.

Because Allen auto and i morrow of Alexandria were in the hall. After Jorge was received he remained inside for some time while Nicholas waited for him. Then he came out and asked Nicholas to accompany him to the church. Still deserted an hour before vespers. The Abbot saw us talking with the seller.

Brother William he admonished. Are you still investigating. He bad Williams said at his table as usual. For benedictines hospitality is sacred. The supper was more silent than usual and said. The abbott eight listlessly oppressed by grim thoughts. At the end he told the monks to hurry to compline.

Ali nardo and Jorge were still absent the monks pointed to the blind man’s empty place and whispered. When the office was finished the Abbot asked all to say a special prayer for the health of Jorge of Burgos. It was not clear whether he meant physical or eternal health.

All understood that a new calamity was about to befall the community. Then the the Abbot ordered each monk to hurry with greater alacrity than usual to his own palette. He commanded that no one and he emphasized the words no one. Should remain in circulation outside the dormitory.

The frightened novices were the first to leave cowles over their faces heads bowed without exchanging the remarks the nudges the flashing smiles the sly and concealed drippings with which they usually provoked one another. For novices though young monks are still boys and the reproaches of their master

Are of little avail in preventing them all from behaving like boys boys as their tender age demands. When the adults filed out i fell into line unobtrusively behind the group that by now had been characterized me as the Italians. Pacifica was murmuring to amaro.

Do you really believe abo doesn’t know where he is. And i morrow answered he might know and know that from where Jorge is he will never return. Perhaps the old man wanted too much and abo no longer wants him.

As William and i pretended to retired to the pilgrims hospice we glimpsed the Abbot reentering the deficient through the still open door of the refectory. William advised waiting awhile once the grounds were empty of every presence he told me to follow him. We rapidly crossed the empty area and entered the church.

After compline. In which almost by chance William discovers the secret of entering the finest Africa. Like a pair of assassins we lurk near the entrance behind a column whence we could observe the chapel with the skulls. Abo has gone to close the division William said

When he has barred the doors from the inside he can only come out through the assyrian. And then. And then we will see what he does. We did not discover what he did. An hour went by and he still had not reappeared. He’s gone into the finest Africa i said. Perhaps William answered.

Eager to formulate more hypotheses i added. Perhaps he came out again through the refectory and has gone to look for Jorge. And William answered that is also possible. Perhaps Jorge is already dead i imagined further. Perhaps he is in the inefficient and is killing the Abbot.

Perhaps they are both in some other place and some other person is lying in wait for them. What the Italians want and why was benno so frightened. Was it perhaps only a mask he had assumed to mislead us. Why had he lingered in the scriptorium during vespers

If he didn’t know how to close the scriptorium or how to get out out. Did he want to se the passages of the labyrinth. All is possible William said but only one thing is happening or has happened or is about to happen.

And at last divine Providence is endowing us with a radiant certitude. What is that i asked full of hope. That brother William of baskerville who now has the impression of having understood everything does not know how to enter the finest Africa. To the stables answer to the stables.

And what if the Abbot finds us. We will pretend to be a pair of ghosts. To me this did not seem a practical solution but i kept silent. William was growing uneasy. We came out of the north door and crossed the cemetery while the wind was whistling

Loudly and i begged the lord not to make us encounter two ghosts. For the Abbey on that night did not lack for souls in torment. We reached the stables and heard the horses more nervous than ever because of the fury of the elements.

The main door of the building had at the level of a man’s chest abroad metal grating through which the interior could be seen. In the darkness we descend the forms of the horses. I recognized brunel as the first on the left to his right the third animal in line raised

His head sensing our presence and winning. I smiled. Tertius equi i said. What William asked. Nothing. I was remembering poor Salvatore. He wanted to perform god knows what magic with that horse and with his Latin he called him tertius equi. Which would be the u. The eu would he amassed.

Who had heard my prattle without paying much attention to it. Yes because tertius equi does not mean the third horse but the third of the horse and the third letter of the word. Equis is you. But this is all nonsense.

William looked at me and in the darkness i seemed to see his face transformed. God bless you and so he said to me. I of course supposition material as. The discourses presumed that they dick do and not a re. What a fool i am.

He gave himself such a great blow on the forehead that i heard a clap and i believe he hurt himself. My boy this is the second time today that wisdom is spoken through your mouth first in dream and now in waking. Run run to your cell and fetch the lamp

Or rather both the lamps we hid let no one see you and join me in church at once asked no questions go. I asked no questions and went the lamps were under my bed already filled with oil and i had taken care to turn them in advance.

I had the flint in my habit with the two precious instruments clutched to my chest i ran into the church. William was under the tripod and was rereading the parchment with finances notes. And so he said to me. Freeman except the moon the quarter does not mean the first and seventh of four

But of that for the word for. For a moment i still did not understand but then i was enlightened. Super thrown us Vicente quatuor. The writing that verse the words are carved over the mirror. Come William said perhaps we are still in time to save a life.

Whose i asked as he was manipulating the skulls and opening the passage to the ethereum. The life of someone who does not deserve it he said. Already in the underground passage are lamps alight moving towards the door that led to the kitchen.

I said before that at this point you pushed a wooden door and found yourself in the kitchen behind the fireplace at the foot of the circular staircase that led to the scriptorium. And just as we were pushing that door we heard two i left some muffled sounds within the wall.

They came from the wall beside the door where the row of niches with skulls and bones ended. Instead of alas niche. That was a stretch a blank wall of large squared blocks of stone with an old plaque in the center that had some worn monograms carved on it.

The sounds came it seemed from behind the plaque or else from above the plaque partly beyond the wall and partly almost over our heads. If something of the sort had happened the first night i would immediately have thought of dead monks but by now i tended to expect worse from living monks.

Who can that be i asked. William opened the door and emerged behind the fireplace. The blows were heard also along the wall that flanked the stairs as if someone were prisoner inside the wall or else in that thickness. Truly vast that presumably existed between the inner wall of

The kitchen and the outer wall of the south tower. Some one has shut up inside there William said. I have wanted all along whether there were not another access to the finest Africa in this inefficient so full of passages. Obviously there is. From the Syrian before you come up into the kitchen.

A stretch of wall opens a new climb up a staircase parallel to this concealed in the wall which leads right to the blind room. But who is in there. The second person. One is in the finest Africa the other has tried to reach him but the one above must

Have blocked the mechanism that controls the entrances. So the visitor is trapped. And he is making a great stir because i imagine there cannot be much air in that narrow space. Who is it we must save him. We shall know soon who it is

And as for saving him that can only be done by releasing the mechanism from above we don’t know the secret at this end. Literary upstairs. So we went up to the scriptorium and from there to the labyrinth and we quickly reached the south tower. Twice i had to curb my haste

Because the wind that came through the slits that night created currents that penetrating those passages blue moaning through the rooms rustling the scattered pages on the desks so that i had to shield the flame with my hand. Soon we were in the mirror room this time

Prepared for the game of distortion awaiting us. We raised the lamps to illuminate the verse that surmounted the frame. Super theranos Vicente quite tour. At this point the secret was quite clear. The word quatuor has seven letters and we had to press on the q and the r.

I thought in my excitement to do it myself i rapidly set the lamp down on the table in the center of the room but i did this nervously and the flame began to lick the binding of a book also set their. Watch out you idiot

William cried and with a puff blew out the flame. You want to set fire to the library. I apologized and started to light the lamp again. It doesn’t matter William said mine is enough take it and give me light because the legend is too high and you couldn’t reach it we must hurry.

What if there’s somebody on in there i asked. As William almost groping sought the fatal letters standing on tiptoe tall as he was to touch the apocalyptic verse. Give me light by the devil and never fear god is with us. He entered me somewhat incoherently. His fingers were touching the cue of quatuor

And standing a few paces back i saw better than he what he was doing. I have already said that the letters of the verses seemed carved or incised in the wall apparently those of the word quatuor were metal outlines. Behind which a wondrous mechanism had been placed and walled up.

When it was pushed forward the q made it kind of sharp click and the same thing happened when William pressed on the are. The whole frame of the mirror seemed to shudder in the glass so surface snapped back. The mirror was a door hinged on it’s left side.

William slipped his hand into the opening now created between the right edge and the wall and fold toward himself. Creaking the door opened out in our direction. Williams slipped through the opening and i scuttled behind him the lamb pie over my head. Two hours after compline at the end of the sixth day

In the heart of the night that was giving birth to the seventh day. We entered the Venus Africa. Chapter seven. The last chapter. Seventh day. Night. In which if that were to summarize the prodigious revelations of which it speaks. The title would have to be as long as the chapter itself.

Contrary to usage. We found ourselves on the threshold of a room similar in shape to the other three have tagging or blind rooms dominated by a strong musty odor as mildewed books. The lamp which i held up high first illuminated the vault. Then as i moved my arm downward to right and left.

The flame cast a vague light on the distant shelves along the walls. Finally in the center we saw a table covered with papers and behind the table a seated figure who seemed to be waiting for us in the darkness immobile. If he was still alive.

Even before the light revealed his face William spoke. Happy night venerable Jorge he said. What are you waiting for us. The lamp now once we had taken a few steps forward illuminated the face of the old man looking at us as if he could see. Is that you William of baskerville he asked.

I have been waiting for you since this afternoon before vespers. When i came and closed myself in here. I knew you would arrive. And the Abbot William asked. Is he the one making that noise in the secret stairway. Or he hesitated for a moment. Is he still alive. He asked.

I thought he would have already suffocated. Before we start talking William said i would like to save him. You can open from this side. No or he said wearily. Not any longer. The mechanism is controlled from below. By pressing on the plaque.

And appear a lever snaps which opens a door back there behind that case. He nodded over his shoulder. Next to the case you could see a wheel with some counterweights which controls the mechanism from up here. But when i heard the wheel turning a sign that abo had entered down below

I yanked the rope that holds the weights and the rope broke. Now the passage is closed on both sides and you could never repair that device. The abbott is dead. Why did you kill him. Today when he sent for me he told me that thanks to you he had discovered everything.

He did not yet know what i had been trying to protect. He has never precisely understood the treasures and the ends of the library. He asked me to explain what he did not know. He wanted the finest Africa to be opened. The Italian said asked him to put an end

To what they call the mystery kept alive by me and my predecessors. They are driven by the lust for new things. And you no doubt promised him you would come here and put an end to your life as you would put an end to the lives of the others in

Such a way that the Abbey’s honor would be saved and no one would know anything. Then you told him the way to come later and check. But instead you waited for him to kill him. Didn’t you think he might enter through the mirror for. No abo is too short.

He would never have been able to reach the verse by himself. I told him about the other passage which i alone still knew. It is the one i used for so many years because it was simpler in the darkness. I had only to reach the chapel.

Then follow the bones of the dead to the end of the passage. So you had him come here knowing you would kill him. I could no longer trust him he was frightened. He had become famous because it fought and over he managed to get a body down some circular stairs. Undeserved glory.

Now he is dead because he was unable to climb his own stairway. You have been using it for forty years. When you realized you were going blind and would no longer be able to control the library. You acted shrewdly. You had a man you could trust elected Abbot and as librarian.

You first had him name Robert a Bobby o whom you could direct as you liked and then maliki. Who needed your help and never took a step without consulting you. For forty years you have been master of this Abbey.

This is what the Italian group realized and this is what Allah nardo kept repeating but no one would listen to him because they considered him mad by now. Am i right. But you were still awaiting me and you couldn’t block the mirror entrance because the mechanism is set in the wall.

Why were you waiting for me. How could you be sure i would arrive. William asked but from his tone it was clear he had already guessed the answer was expecting it as a reward for his own skill. From the first day i realized he would understand.

From your voice from the way you drew me to debate on a subject i did not want mentioned. You were better than the others. You would have arrived at the solution no matter what. You know that it suffices to think and to reconstruct in one’s own mind the thoughts of the other.

And then i heard you were asking the other monks questions. All of them the right ones. But you never asked questions about the library. As if you already knew it’s every secret. One night i came and knocked at your cell and you were not in. You had to be here.

Two lamps had disappeared from the kitchen i heard a servant say. And finally when several rinus came to talk to you about a book the other day in the narthex i was sure you were on my trail. But you managed to get the book away from me.

You went to maliki who had had no idea of the situation. In his jealousy the fool was still obsessed with the idea that a demo had stolen his beloved baron gar. Who by then craved younger flesh. Didn’t understand what the natchez had to do with his

Business and you confused his thinking even further. You’ll probably told him baron gar had been intimate with several rinus and as rewards of a rinus had given him a book from the Phineas Africa. I don’t know exactly what you told him. Crazed with jealousy maliki went to several rinus and killed him.

Then he didn’t have time to hunt for the book you described to him because the seller arrived. Is that what happened. More or less. But you didn’t want maliki to die. He had probably never looked at the books of the Phineas Africa for he trusted you respected your prohibitions.

He confined himself to arranging the herbs that evening to frighten any intruders. Several rinus supplied him with them. This is why sir verena let maliki enter the infirmary the other day eh. It was his regular visit to collect the fresh herbs he prepared daily by the abbott’s order. Have i guessed.

You have guessed. I did not want maliki to die. I told him to find the book again by whatever means and bring it back here without opening it. I told him it had power of one thousand scorpions. But for the first time the madman chose to act on his own initiative.

I did not want him to die he was a faithful agent. But do not repeat to me what you know. I know that you know. I do not want to feed your pride. You already see to that on your own. I heard you this morning in the scriptorium.

Questioning benaud about the coziness of brioni. You are very close to the truth. I do not know how you discovered the secret of the mirror but when i learned from the Abbot that you had mentioned the finest Africa. I was sure he would come shortly. This is why i was waiting for you.

So now what do you want. I want William said. To see the last manuscript of the bound volume that contains an arabic text the syriac one and an interpretation or a transcription of the Cohen is a brioni. I want to see that copy in Greek

May perhaps by an arab or by a spaniard. That you found when as assistant to Paul of rimini you arranged to be sent back to your country to collect the finest manuscripts of the apocalypse in Leon and steel. A Booty that made you famous and respected here in the Abbey

And caused you to win the post of librarian which rightfully belonged to Ali nardo ten years your senior. I want to see that great copy written on linen paper which was then very rare and was manufactured in siloes near Burgos your home.

I want to see the book you stole there after reading it. To keep others from reading it. And you hit it here protecting it cleverly and you did not destroy it because a man like you does not destroy a book but simply guards it and make sure no one touches it.

I want to see the second book of the poetics of Aristotle. The book everyone is believed lost or never written and of which you hold perhaps the only copy. What a magnificent librarian you would have been William. Or he said. With a tone at once admiring and regretful. So you know everything. Come.

I believe there is a stool on your side of the table. Sit. Here is your prize. William sat and put down the lamp which i had handed to him. Illuminating Jorge’s face from below. The old man took a volume that lay before him and passed it to William. I recognized the binding

It was the book i had opened in the infirmary thinking it an arabic manuscript. Read it then leave through it William Jorge said. You’ll have one. William looked at the volume but did not touch it. From his habit he took a pair of gloves. Not his usual myths with the fingertips exposed

But the ones several rinus was wearing when we found him dead. Slowly he opened the worn and fragile binding. I came closer and bent over his shoulder. Jorge with his sensitive hearing i caught the noise i made. Are you here too boy he said. I will show it to you too. Afterward.

William rapidly glanced over the first pages. It is an arabic manuscript on the sayings of some fool according to the catalog he said. What is it. Oh silly legends of the infidels which hold that fools at her clever remarks that amaze even their priests and delight their caliphs.

The second is a syriac manuscript but according to the catalog it is the translation of a little Egyptian book on alchemy. How does it happen to be in this collection. It is an Egyptian work from the third century of our era. Coherent with the work that follows but less dangerous.

No one would lend an ear to the ravings of an African alchemist. He attributes the creation of the world to divine laughter. He raised his face and recited with a prodigious memory of a reader who for forty years now had been repeating to himself things

Red when he still had the gift of sight. The moment god laughed seven gods were born who governed the world. The moment he burst out laughing light appeared. At his second laugh appeared water and on the seventh day of his laughing appeared the soul. Folly. Likewise the work that comes after

By one of the countless idiots whose themselves the glossing the co Elena. But these are not what interests you. William in fact had rapidly passed over the pages and had come to the Greek text. I saw immediately that the pages were of a different softer material. The first almost worn away

With a part of the margin consumed spattered with pale stains such as time and dampness usually produce on other books. William read the opening line lines first in Greek then translating into Latin. And then he continued in this language so that i too could learn how the fatal book began.

In the first book we dealt with tragedy and saw how by arousing pity and fear it produces catharsis the purification of those feelings. As we promised we will now deal with comedy as well as with satire and mime. And see how in inspiring the pleasure of the ridiculous.

It arrives at the purification of that power passion. That such passion is most worthy of consideration we have already said in the book and the soul. In as much as alone among the animals man is capable of laughter. We will then define the type of actions of which comedy is the mommy says.

Then we will examine the means by which comedy excites laughter and these means our actions and speech. We will show how the ridiculousness of actions is born from the likening of the best to the worst and vice versa. From arousing surprise through deceit from the impossible

From vi violation of the laws of nature from the irrelevant and the and consequent from the debasing of the characters. From the use of comical and vulgar pantomime. From disharmony. From the choice of the least worthy things. We will then show how the ridiculousness of speech is born from the misunderstandings

Of similar words for different things and different words for similar things. From guerilla tea and repetition from play on words from diminutive from errors of pronunciation and from barbarisms. William translated with some difficulty seeking the right words pausing now and then. As he translated he smiled

As if he recognized things he was expecting to find. He read the first page aloud then stopped as if he were not interested in knowing more and rapidly lead through the following pages. But after a few pages he encountered resistance. Because near the upper corner of the side edge and along the top

Some pages had stuck together as happens when the damp and deteriorating papery substance forms a kind of sticky paste. Or he realized that the rustle of pages had ceased and he urged William on. Go on read it leaf through it. It is yours you have earned it. William laughed seeming rather amused.

Then it is not true that you consider me so clever Jorge. You cannot see i have gloves on. With my fingers made clumsy like this i cannot detach one page from the next. I should proceed with bare hands moistening my fingers with my tongue as i happen to

Do this morning while reading in the scriptorium. So that suddenly that mystery also became clear to me. And i should go on living like that until a good portion of the poison had passed to my mouth. I am speaking of the poison that you

One day long ago took from the laboratory of several rinus. Perhaps you are already worried then because you had heard someone in the scriptorium display curiosity. Either about the finest Africa or about the last book of Aristotle or about both. I believe you kept the ampule for a long time

Planning to use it the moment you sense danger. And you sense that days ago when finances came too close to the subject of this book. And at the same time baron gar heedless vain. Trying to impress a demo. Showed he was less secretive than you had hoped.

So you came and set your trap. Just in time. Because a few nights later have an anxious got him stole the book and avidly lead through it with an almost physical voracity. He soon felt ill and ran to seek help in the kitchen. Where he died. Am i mistaken. No go on.

The rest is simple. Barren guard finds been anxious his body in the kitchen fears there will be an inquiry because after all have an anxious got into the eat efficient at night thanks to baron gars prior revelation to a demo. He doesn’t know what to do.

He loads the body on his shoulders and flings it into the jar of blood thinking everyone will be convinced financial drowned. And how do you know that was what happened. You know it as well. I saw how you reacted when they found a cloth stained with baron god’s blood.

With that cloth the foolhardy man had wiped his hands after putting bananas in the jar. But since baron god had disappeared he could only have disappeared with the book which by this point it aroused his curiosity too. And you were expecting him to be found somewhere not bloodstained but poisoned.

The rest is clear. Several rinas finds the book because baron gar went first to the infirmary to read it. Safe from indiscreet eyes. Maliki get your instigation kills several rinus then dies himself when he comes back you to discover what was so forbidden about the object that had made him a murderer.

And thus we have an explanation for all the corpses. What a fool. Who. I. Because of a remark about Leonardo’s i was convinced the series of crimes followed the sequence of the seven trumpets of the apocalypse. Hale for a del mo and his death was a suicide.

Blood for been anxious and there it had been a bizarre notion of barren gars. Water for baron got himself and it had been a random act. The third part of the sky for several rinas. And maliki had struck him with the arma Larry’s fear because it was the only thing he found handy.

And finally scorpions for maliki. Why did you tell him that the book had the power of a thousand scorpions. Because of you. Are Leonardo and told me about his idea and then i heard from someone that you two found it persuasive. I became convinced. That a divine plan was directing these deaths

For which i was not responsible. And i told maliki that if he were to become curious he would perish in accordance with the same divine plan. And so he did. So then. I conceived a false pattern to interpret the moves of the guilty man and the guilty man fell in with it.

And it was this same false pattern that put me on your trail. Everyone nowadays is obsessed with the book of John. But you seem to me the one who pondered it most and not so much because of your speculations about the antichrist.

As because you came from the country that has produced the most splendid apocalypses. One day somebody told me it was you who had brought the most beautiful courtesies of this book to the library. Then another day Ali nada was raving about a mysterious enemy who had been sent to seek books in siloes.

My curiosity was piqued when he said this enemy had returned prematurely into the realm of darkness. At first it might have seemed the man he was speaking of had died young but he was referring to your blindness. Siloes as near Burgos and this morning in the catalog i found a series of acquisitions.

All of them Spanish apocalypses from the period when you had succeeded or were about to succeed Paul of rimini. And in that group of acquisitions there was this book also. But i couldn’t be positive of my reconstruction until i learned that the stolen book was on linen paper.

Then i remembered siloes and i was sure. Naturally as the idea of this book and it’s venomous power gradually began to take shape. The idea of an apocalyptic pattern began to collapse though i couldn’t understand how both the book and the sequence of the trumpets pointed to you.

But i understood the story of the book better because directed by the apocalyptic pattern i was forced more and more to think of you you and your debates about laughter. So that this evening when i no longer believed in the apocalyptic pattern i insisted on watching the stables.

And in the stables by pure chance and so gave me the key to entering the finest Africa. I cannot follow you or he said. You are proud to show me how following the dictates of your reason you arrived at me

And yet you have shown me you arrived here by following a false reasoning. What you mean to say to me. Do you nothing. I am disconcerted that is all but it is of no matter i am here. The lord was sounding the seven trumpets.

And you even in your era heard a confused echo of that sound. You said this yesterday evening in your sermon. You are trying to convince yourself that this whole story proceeded according to a divine plan. Yesterday you said that Judas was also an instrument that does not prevent him from being damned.

I accept the risk of damnation the lord will absolve me because he knows i acted for his glory. My duty was to protect the law library. A few minutes ago you are ready to kill me too and also this boy. You are suppler but no better than the others.

And now what will happen now that i have alluded that trap. We shall see Jorge answered. I do not necessarily want your death. Perhaps i will succeed in convincing you but first tell me. How did you guessed it was the second book of Aristotle.

Your anathema is against laughter would surely not have been enough for me or what little i learned about your argument with the others. At first i didn’t understand their significance but there were references to a shameless stone that rolls over the plane and two cicadas that will sing from the ground

To venerable fig trees. I had already read something of the sort i verified it during these past few days. These are examples that Aristotle used in the first book of the poetics and in the rhetoric. Then i remembered that isidore of Seville defines comedy is something that tells of

Supervision on at a Morris marriage rican. How shall i put it of less than virtuous loves. Gradually the same second book took shape in my mind as it had to be. I could tell you almost all of it without reading the pages that were meant to poison me.

Comedy is born from the coma that is from the peasant villages. As a joyous celebration after a meal or a feast. Comedy does not tell a famous and powerful men but of basin ridiculous creatures though not we wicked. And it does not end with the death of the protagonists.

It achieves the effect of the ridiculous by showing the defects and vices of ordinary men. Here Aristotle sees the tendency to laughter as a force for good. Which can also have an instructive value. Through witty riddles and unexpected metaphors.

Though it tells us things differently from the way they are as if it were lying it actually obliges us to examine them more closely and it makes us say ah this is just how things are and i didn’t know it. Truth reached by depicting men in the world as

Worse than they are or than we believed them to be. Worse in any case then the ethics the tragedies the lives of the saints have shown them to us. Is that it. Fairly close. You reconstructed it by reading other books. Many of which have an anxious was working on.

I believe the naches had been hunting for this book for some time. He must have read in the catalog the indications i also read. And must have been convinced this was the book he was seeking. But he didn’t know how to enter the finest Africa.

When he heard baron gar speak of it with a del mo then he was off like a dog on the track of the hair. That is what happened. I understood at once. I realized the moment had come when i would have to defend the library tooth and nail. And you spread the ointment

It must have been a hard task in the dark. By now my hands see more than your eyes. I had taken a brush from several rinus and i also used gloves. It was a good idea was it not it took you a long time to arrive at it.

Yes i was thinking of a more complex device a poisoned pen or something of the sort. I must say that your solution was exemplary. The victim poisoned himself when he was alone and only to the extent that he wanted to read. I realized with a shudder.

That at this moment these two men arrayed in a immortal conflict were admiring each other as if each had acted only to win the others applause. The thought crossed my mind that the artifices baron guy used to seduce and elmo and the simple and natural acts with which

The girl had aroused my passion and my desire. Were nothing compared with the cleverness and mad skill each use to conquer the other. Nothing compared with the act of seduction going on before my eyes at that moment. Which had unfolded over seven days. Each each of the two interlocutors making as it were

Mysterious appointments with each other. Each secretly aspiring to the others approbation each fearing and hating the other. But now tell me William was saying. Why. Why did you want to shield this book more than so many others. Why did you hide though not at the price of crime

Treatises on necromancy pages that may have blasphemed against the name of god. While for these pages you damned your brothers and have damned yourself. There are many other books that speak of comedy many others that praise laughter. Why did this one fill you with such fear. Because it was by the philosopher.

Every book by that man has destroyed a part of the learning that christianity had accumulated over the centuries. The fathers had said everything that needed to be known about the power of the word but then believe he has had only two gloss the philosopher and the divine mystery of

The word was transformed into a human parody of categories and syllogism. The book of Genesis says what has to be known about the composition of the cosmos but it’s suffice to rediscover the physics of the philosopher to have the universe reconceived in terms of dull and slimy matter

And the era Beverly’s almost convinced every one of the eternity of the world. We knew everything about the divine names and the Dominican buried by abo seduce used by the philosopher renamed them. Following the proud paths of natural reason.

And so the cosmos which for the area up a guide revealed itself to those who knew how to look up at the luminous cascade of the exemplary first cause. Has become a preserve of terrestrial evidence for which they referred to an abstract agent. Before we used to look to heaven.

Deigning only a frowning glance at the mire of matter. Now we. It’s and we believe in the heavens because of earthly testimony. Every word of the philosopher by whom now even saints and prophets were has overturned the image of the world. But he had not succeeded in overturning the image of god.

If this book were to become. Had become an object for open interpretation we would have crossed the last boundary. But what frightened you in this discussion of laughter. You cannot eliminate laughter by eliminating the book. No to be sure but laughter is weakness corruption the foolishness of our flesh.

It is the peasants entertainment the drunkards license. Even the church in her wisdom has granted the moment of feast carnival fair. This diurnal pollution that releases humors and distracts from other desires and other ambitions. Still laughter remains base a defense for the simple. A mystery desecrated for the plebeians.

The apostle also said as much. It is better to marry than to burn. Rather than rebel against god’s established order laugh and enjoy your foul parodies of order at the end of the meal after you have drained jugs flasks. Elect the king of fools

Lose yourselves in the liturgy of the ass and the pig. Play at performing your saturnalia head down. But here here. Now Jorge struck the table with his finger near the book William was holding open. Here the function of laughter is reversed. It is elevated to art.

The doors of the world of the learned are open to it it becomes the object of philosophy and the perfidious theology. You saw yesterday how the simple can conceive and carry out the most lurid heresies. Disavowing the laws of god and the laws of nature.

But the church can deal with the heresy of the simple who condemned themselves on their own destroyed by their ignorance. The ignorant madness of bill chino and his like will never cause a crisis in the divine order. He will preach violence and will die of violence will leave no trace.

Will be consumed as carnival is consumed and it does not matter whether during the feast the epiphany of the world upside down will be produced on earth for a brief time. Provided the act is not transformed into plan. Provided this vulgar tongue does not find a Latin that translated.

Laughter freeze the verlaine from the fear of the devil. Because in the feast of fools the devil also appears for and foolish and therefore controllable. But this book could teach that freeing oneself of the fear of the devil is wisdom. When he laughs as the wine gurgles in his throat

The baleen feels he has master because he has overturned his position with respect to his lord. But this book could teach learned men the clever and from that moment illustrious artifices that could legitimize the reversal. Then what in the verlaine is still fortunately an operation of the belly

Would be transformed into an operation of the brain. That laughter is proper to man is a sign of our limitation centers that we are. But from this book many corrupt minds like yours would draw the extreme syllogism whereby laughter is man’s end. Laughter for a few moments distracts the verlaine from fear

But law is imposed by fear whose true name is fear of god. This book could strike the Lucifer and spark that would set a new fire to the whole world and laughter would be defined as the new art unknown even to prometheus for cancelling fear. To the verlaine who laughs at that moment

Dying does not matter. But then when the licenses passed the liturgy again imposes on him according to the divine plan the fear of death. And from this book that could be born the new destructive aim to destroy death through redemption from fear. And what would we be we sinful creatures without fear.

Perhaps the most foresighted the most loving of the divine gifts. For centuries the doctors and the fathers have secreted perfumed essences of holy law learning to redeem. Through the thought of that which is lofty the wretchedness and temptation of that which is base. And this book.

Considering comedy a wondrous medicine with it’s satire and mime which would produce the purification of the passions through the enactment of defect fault weakness. Would induce false scholars to try to redeem the lofty with a diabolical reversal. Through the acceptance of the base.

This book could prompt the idea that men can wish to have on earth as your bacon suggested with regard to natural magic. The abundance of the land of cocaine. But this is what we cannot and must not have. Look at the young monks who shamelessly read the

Paradises buffoonery of the coin a cyprian a. What a diab follicle transfiguration of the holy scripture. And yet as they read it they know it is evil. But on the day when the philosophers world would justify the marginal jests of the debauched imagination.

Or when what has been marginal would lead to the center every trace of the center would be lost. The people of god would be transformed into an assembly of monsters belched forth from the abysses of the terra incognita. And at that moment the edge of the known world

Would become the heart of the Christian empire they are a mess beyond the throne of Peter. Blimey ease in the monasteries dwarfs with huge bellies and immense heads in charge of the library. See servants laying down the law we but you too then obeying in the absence any law.

A Greek philosopher whom your Aristotle quotes here an accomplice and foul authorities. Said that the seriousness of opponents must be dispelled with laughter and laughter opposed with seriousness. The prudence of our fathers made it’s choice. If laughter is the delight of the plebeians the license of the plebeians must be restrained and humiliated

And intimidated by sternness. And plebeians have no weapons for refining their laughter until they have made it an instrument against the seriousness of the spiritual Shepherds who must lead them to eternal life and rescue them from the seductions of belly pretender foo food. Their sordid desires.

But if one day somebody brandishing the words of the philosopher and therefore speaking as a philosopher were to raise the weapon of laughter to the condition of subtle weapon. If the rhetoric of conviction will replaced by the rhetoric of mockery.

Is the topics of the patient construction of the images of redemption were to be replaced by the topics of the impatient dismantling and upsetting of every holy and venerable image. Oh. That day even you William and all your knowledge would be swept away. Why.

I would match my whit with the wit of others that would be a better world than the one where the fire and red hot iron of Bernard g humiliate the fire and red hot iron of del chino. You yourself would then be caught in the devil’s plot.

You would fight on the other side of the field of armageddon where the final conflict must take place. But by that day. The church must be able to impose once again it’s rule on the conflict. Blasphemy does not frighten us. Because even in the cursing of god we recognize

The deformed image of the wrath of jehovah who curses the rebellious angels. We are not afraid of the violence of those who killed the Shepherds in the name of some fantasy of renewal because it is the same violence as that of the princes who tried to destroy the people of Israel.

We are not afraid of the severity of the donut tests. The mad suicide of the circumstellar ions the lust of the bulger mills the proud purity of the abba Jensen’s the flatulence need for blood the evil madness of the brothers of the free spirit.

We know them all and we know the root of their sins which is also the root of our holiness. We are not afraid and above all we know how to destroy them. Better. How to allow them to destroy themselves

Arrogantly carrying to it’s zenith the will to die that is born from their own nita. Indeed. I would say their presence is precious to us it is inscribed in the plan of god because their sin prompts our virtual they’re cursing encourages our hymn of praise their undisciplined penance regulates our taste for sacrifice.

Their impiety makes our piety shine. Just as the prince of da darkness was necessary with his rebellion and his desperation to make the glory of god shine more radiantly the beginning and end of all hope. But if one day and no longer is to be an exception but as thesis of the learned.

Devoted to the indestructible testimony of scripture. The art of mockery were to be made acceptable and to seem no noble and liberal and no longer mechanical. If one day someone could say and be heard i laugh at the incarnation. Then we would have no weapons to combat that blasphemy

Because it would summon the dark powers of corporal matter those that are affirmed in the fart and the belch and the fart and the belch would claim the right that is only of the spirit too breathe where they list. Lycurgus had a statue erected to laughter.

You’ll read that in the libellous of parisian who tried to absolve minds of the sin of impiety and tells how a stick man was healed by a doctor who helped him laugh. What need was there to heal him have gathered established at his earthly day had reached it’s end.

I don’t believe the doctor cured him he taught him to laugh at his illness. Illness has not exercised it is destroyed. With the body of the sick man. If necessary. You are the devil William said then. Or he seemed not to understand. If he had been able to see i would say he

Stared at his interlocutor with a dazed look. I he said. Yes. They lied to you. The devil is not the prince of matter. The devil is the arrogance of the spirit. Faith without smile truth that is never seized by doubt. The devil is grim because he knows where he is going

And in moving he always returns whence he came. You are the devil and like the devil you live in darkness. If you wanted to convince me you have faith. I hate you Jorge and if i could. I would lead you downstairs across the ground naked with fouls feathers stuck in your

Asshole in your face painted like a juggler and a buffoon so the whole monastery would laugh at you and be afraid no longer. I would like to smear honey all over you and then roll you in feathers and take you on a leashed affairs to say to all

He was announcing the truth to you and telling you that the truth as the taste of death and you believed not in his words but in his grimness. And now i say to you that in the infinite world of possible things.

God allows you also to imagine a world where the presumed and interpreter of the truth is nothing but a clumsy raven who repeats words learned long ago. You are worse than the devil minor right. Jorge said. You are a clown like the Saint who gave birth to you all.

You are like your Francis who they Toto called for a feature at lingua one who preached sermons giving a performance like amount banks. Who confounded the miser by putting gold pieces in his head hand and who humiliated the nuns devotion by reciting the misery instead of the sermon. Who begged in French

And imitated with a piece of wood the movements of a violin player who disguised himself as a tramp to confound the gluttonous monks who flung himself naked in the snow spoke with animals and plants transformed the very mystery of the nativity into a village spectacle.

Called the lamb of Bethlehem by imitating the bleat of the sheep. It was a good school. Was that fryer. The ot salvy of Florence not a minor right. Yes. William smiled. The one who went to the convent of the preachers and said that he would not accept food.

If first they did not give him a piece of brother John’s tunic to preserve as a relic and when he was given it he wiped his behind and threw it in the dung heap and with a stick rolled it around in the dung shouting.

Alas helped me brothers because i dropped the Saint’s relic in the latrine. This story amuses you apparently. Perhaps you would like to tell me also the one about your other minor eye fryer for a meal mush. Who one day fell full length on the ice.

When his fellow citizens mocked him and one asked him whether he would not like the lions something better he said to the man yes your wife. That is how you are your brothers seek the truth. That is how Francis taught people to look at things from another direction. But we have discipline them.

You saw them yesterday your brothers. They have rejoined our ranks they no longer speak like the simple. The simple must not speak. This book would have justified the idea that the tongue of the simple is the vehicle of wisdom. This had to be prevented which i have done.

You say i am the devil but it is not true i have been the hand of god. The hand of god creates that does not conceal. There are boundaries beyond which it is not permitted to go. God decreed that certain papers should bear the words hic sunt Leon s.

God created the monsters too. And you. And he wants everything to be spoken of. Or he reached out his shaking hands and drew the book to him. He held it open but turned it around so that William could still see it in the right position. Then why. He said.

Did he allow this text to be lost over the course of the centuries and only one copy to be saved and the copy of that copy which had ended up god knows where to remain buried for years in the hands of an infidel who knew no Greek

And then to lie abandoned in the secrecy of an old library were i not you was called by Providence to find it and to hide it for the more years still. I know i know as if i saw it written in adamantine letters with my eyes which see things you do not see.

I know that this was the will of god and and i acted interpreting it. In the name of the father of the son and of the holy ghost. Night. In which the ecpi roses takes place and because of excess virtue the forces of hell prevail. The old man was silent.

He held both hands open on the book as if caressing it’s pages flattening them the better to read them. Or as if he wanted to protect the book from a raptors talons. All this in any case has been to no avail William said to him. Now it is over. I have found you

I have found the book and the others died in vain. Not in vain for he said. Perhaps there were too many of them and if you needed proof that this book is a cursed you have had it

And to ensure they have not died in vain one more death will not be too many. He spoke and with his fleshly diaphanous hands he began slowly tearing to strips and shreds the limb pages of the manuscript stuffing them into his mouth slowly swallowing as if he were consuming the

Host and he wanted to make it flesh of his flesh. William looked at him fascinated and seemed not to grasp what was happening. Then he recovered himself and leaned forward shouting what are you doing. Or he smiled baring his bloodless gums as a yellowish slime trickled from his pale

Lips over the sparse white hairs on his chin. You were waging the sound of the seventh trumpet where you’re not. Now listen to what the voice says. See what the seven thunders have said then do not write it. Taken devour

It will make bitter your belly but to your lips it will be as sweet as honey you see. Now i see all that which was not to be said in the grave i become. He laughed. He Jorge. For the first time i heard him laugh. He laughed with his throat

Though his lips did not assume the shape of gaiety and he seemed almost to be weeping. You did not expected William. Or. Not this conclusion did you. This all ran by the grace of god wins once more does he not.

And as William tried to take the book away from him Jorge who sense the movement feeling the vibration of the air drew back clasping the volume to his chest with his left hand while his right went on tearing the pages and cramming them into his mouth.

He was on the other side of the table and William who could not reach him tried abruptly to move around the obstacle but he knocked over his stool catching his habit in it so that Jorge was able to perceive the disturbance. The old man laughed again louder this time

And with unexpected rapidity thrust out his right hand groping for the lamp. Guided by the heat he reached the flame and pressed his hand over it unafraid of pain and the light went out. The room was plunged into darkness and for the last time we heard the laughter of Jorge who said

Find me now. I am the one who sees best. Then he was silent and did not make another sound moving with those silent footsteps that always made his appearances so unexpected. And we heard only from time to time in different parts of the room the sound of the tearing paper. And so

William cried stay by the door don’t let him go out. But he had spoken too late because i who for some moments had been yearning to fling myself on the old man had jumped forward when the darkness fell trying to circle the table on the side opposite

The one around which my master had moved. Too late i realized i had enabled Jorge to gain the door because the old man could move in the dark with extraordinary confidence. We heard a sound of tearing paper behind us somewhat muffled because it came from the next room

And at the same time we heard another sound a harsh progressive creaking the groan of hinges. The mirror William cried he was shutting us inside. Led by the sound we both rushed toward the entrance. I stumbled over a stool and bruised my leg but paid no heed because in a flash i

Realized that if Jorge shut us in we would never get out. In the darkness we would never find a way to open the door not knowing what had to be maneuvered on this side or how. I believe William moved with the same desperation as i did because i felt him beside

Me as both of us reaching the threshold pressed ourselves against the back of the mirror which was closing toward us. We arrived in time the door stopped then gave way and reopened. Obviously Jorge sensing the conflict was unequal had left.

We came out of the acoust room but now he had no idea where the old man was heading and the darkness was still complete. All of a sudden i remembered. Master i have the flint with me. What are you waiting for then William cried find lamp and light it.

I rushed back in the darkness into the Phineas Africa roping for the lamp. I found it at once by divine miracle. Then dug inside my scapular and pulled out the flint. My hands were trembling and two or three times i failed before i was able to light it

As William gasped at the door hurry hurry. Finally i made a light. Hurry will you emerged me again. Otherwise the old man will eat up all of Aristotle. And die i cried in anguish overtaking him and joining in the search. I don’t care whether he dies down the monster William

Cried peering in every direction moving at random. With what he has eaten his fate is already sealed but i want the book. Then he stopped and added more calmly. Wait. If we continue like this we’ll never find him hush. Will remain still for a moment. We stiffened in silence

And in the silence we heard not far away the sound of a body bumping into a case and the racket of some falling books. That way we shouted together. We ran in the direction of the noise but soon realized we would have to slow our pace.

In fact outside the Phineas Africa the library was filled that evening with gusts of air that history moaned. In proportion to the strong wind outside. Heightened by our speed they threatened to put out our light so painfully recovered. Since we could not move faster we would have to make Jorge move more slowly.

But William had just the opposite idea and shouted we’ve caught you old man now we have light. It was a wise decision because the revelation probably upset Jorge. Who moved faster compromising his magic sensibility his gift for seeing in the darkness. Soon we heard another noise and following it

When we entered the room why have the spanier we saw him lying on the floor the book still in his hand as he attempted to pull himself to his feet among the books that had spilled from the table he had struck and overturned. He was trying to stand

But he went on tearing the pages determined to devour his prey as quickly as possible. We overtook him he was on his feet. Sensing our presence he confronted us moving backward his face in the reddish glow of the lamp now seemed horrible to us. The features were distorted

A malignant sweat streaked his brow and cheeks his eyes usually a deathly white were bloodshot. From his mouth came scraps of parchment and he looked like a ravening beast with stuffed hymns self and could no longer swallow his food. Disfigured by anxiety by the menace of the

Poison now flowing abundantly through his veins. By his desperate and diabolical determination the venerable figure of the old man now seemed disgusting and grotesque. At other moments he might have inspired laughter but we too were reduced to the condition of animals dog dogs stalking their quarry.

We could have taken him calmly but we fell on him with violence he writhed clasped his hands on his chest to defend the volume. I grasped and with my left hand while with my right i tried to hold the lamb pie but i grazed his face with the flame. He sensed the heat

Let out a muffled cry almost a roar as bits of paper spilled from his mouth and his right hand let go of the volume darted toward the lamp and abruptly tore it from the flinging it away. The lamp fell on the pile of books that had been

Knocked from the table all in a heap lying open. The oil spilled out the fire immediately seized a fragile parchment which blazed up like a bundle of dried twigs. Everything happened in a few moments as if for centuries those ancient pages had been yearning for arson and were rejoicing in the sudden satisfaction

Of an ear immemorial thirst for ecpi roses. William realized what was happening and let go of the old man who feeling himself free step back a few paces. William hesitated an instant most likely to long uncertain whether to seize Jorge again or hastened to put out the little pyre. One book

Older than the others burned almost immediately sending up a tongue of flame. The fine gusts of the wind which might have extinguished a weak flicker encouraged the stronger livelier flame and even carried sparks flying from it. Put out that fire quickly William cried everything will burn up.

I rushed toward the Blaze then stopped because i was unsure what to do. William again moved after me to come to my aid. We held out our hands as our eyes sought something to smother the fire. I had a flash of inspiration.

I slipped my habit over my head and tried to throw it on the heart of the fire. But the flames were by now too high they consumed my garment and were nourished by it. Snatching back my scorched hands i turned toward William and saw Jorge who had approached again directly behind him.

The heat was now so strong that the old man could feel it very easily. So he knew with absolute certainty where the fire was he flung the Aristotle into it. In an explosion of fire William gave the old man a violent push Jorge slammed into a case banging his head against one corner

He fell to the ground. But William whom i believe i heard utter a horrible curse paid no heed to him. He turned to the books. Too late. The Aristotle or what had remained of it after the old man’s meal was already burning.

Meanwhile some spots had flown towards the walls and already the volumes of another bookcase were crumpling in the fury of the fire. By now. Not one but two fires were burning in the room. William realizing we would not be able to put them

Out with our hands decided to use books to save books. He sees the volume that seemed to him more stoutly bound than the others more compact and he tried to use it as a weapon to stifle the hostile element. But slamming the studied binding on the pyre

Of glowing books he merely stood more sparks. Though he tried to scatter them with his feet he achieved the opposite effect. Fluttering scraps of parchment half burned Rose and hovered like bats while the air allied with it’s airy fellow element sent them to kindle the terrestrial matter of further pages.

As miss fortune would have it this was one of the most untidy rooms of the labyrinth. Rolled up manuscripts hung from the shelves other books falling apart let pages slip from their covers as from gaping mouths tons of vellum dried up by the years.

And the table must have held a great number of writings that maliki by then unassisted for some days had neglected to put back in their place says. So the room after the spill Jorge caused was invaded by parchments waiting only to be transformed into another element.

In no time the place was a brazier a burning bush. The bookcases themselves also joined in the sacrifice and were beginning to crackle. I realized the whole labyrinth was nothing but an immense sacrificial pyre all prepared for the first spark. Water we need water William was saying but then he added.

But where can any water be found in this inferno. In the kitchen down in the kitchen i cried. William looked at me puzzled. His face flushed by that raging glow. Yes but by the time we’d gone down and come back up. Ah the devil take it he then cried

This room is lost in any case and perhaps the next one is well let’s go down at once I’ll find water and you rush out to give the alarm we need a lot of people. We found a way toward the stairs the conflagration lighted

The subsequent rooms as well but more and more faintly so we crossed the last two almost groping again. Below the moon dimly illuminated the scriptorium and from there we went down to the refectory. William rushed into the kitchen i to the refectory door fumbling to open it from the inside.

I succeeded after a fair amount of labour for my agitation made me clumsy and inept. I stepped out onto the grass ran toward the dormitory then realized i could not wake the monks one by one. I had an inspiration i went into the church hunting for the access to the bell tower

When i found it i grabbed all the ropes ringing the alarm i pulled hard and the central bell rope as it Rose drew me up with it. In the library the backs of my hands had been burned. My palm moms were still unhurt but now i burn them

To letting them slip along the ropes until they bled and i had to let go. By then however i had made enough noise. I rushed outside in time to see the first monks coming from the dormitory as i heard in the distance the voices of the servants

Who were appearing at the doors of their lodgings. I could not explain myself clearly because i was unable to formulate words and the first that came to my lips were in my mother tongue. With bleeding hand i pointed to the windows of the south wing of the division

And whose alabaster pains there was never normal glow. I realized from the intensity of the light that the fire had spread to other rooms while i had come down and rung the bells. All the windows of Africa and the whole facade between it and the east tower now flickered with irregular flashes. Water

Fetch water i shouted. At first no one understood. The monks were so used to considering the library as sacred and inaccessible place that they could not understand it was threatened by the sort of banal accident that might have befallen a peasant hut.

The first who looked up at the windows blessed themselves murmuring words of fear and i realized they were thinking of further apparitions. I grabbed their clothing and begged them to understand until someone finally translated my sobs into human words. It was Nicholas of Myra mundo who said. The library is on fire.

It is indeed i whispered sinking to the ground ig xos did. Nicholas display great energy shouted orders to the servants gave advice to the monks surrounding him sent some to open the other doors of the division others to seek water and vessels of every kind.

He directed those present toward the Wells and the water tanks of the Abbey. He ordered the cowards to use the mules and asses to transport jars. If a man invested with authority had given these orders he would have been obeyed at once but the servants were accustomed to taking

Orders from remedial the scribes from maliki all of them from the Abbot. Alas none of those three was present. The monks looked around for the Abbot to ask instructions and solace and did not find him. Only i knew that he was dead or dying at that moment

Shut up in an airless passage that was now turning into an oven a bullet valorous. Nicholas shove the cow herds in one direction but some other monks with the best of intentions pushed them in another. Some of the brothers had obviously lost their heads others were still dazed with sleep.

I tried to explain now that i had recovered the power of speech but it must be remembered that i was almost naked having thrown my habit on the flames and the sight of a boy as i was then bleeding his face smudged by soot his body indecently hairless numbed now by the cold

Surely did not inspire much confidence. Finally Nicholas managed to drag a few brothers and some other men into the kitchen which in the meantime someone had opened another monk had the good sense to bring some torches. We found the place in great disorder and i realized William must have turned it

Upside down seeking water and vessels to carry it. At that point i saw William himself appear from the door of the refectory his face singed his habit smoking he was carrying a large pot in his hand and i felt pity for him pathetic allegory of helplessness.

I realized that even if he had succeeded in carrying a pan of water to the second floor without spilling it and even if he had done so more than once he could have achieved very a little. I recalled the story of st augustan when he saw a boy

Trying to scoop up the water of the sea with a spoon. The boy was an angel and did this to make fun of a Saint who wanted to understand the mysteries of divine nature. And like the angel Williams spoke to me leaning and exhaustion against the door jam. It is impossible

We will never do it not even with all the monks of the Abbey. The library is lost. Unlike the angel William wept. I hugged him. As he tore a cloth from a table and tried to cover me. We stopped and finally defeated observed what was going on around us.

There was a confused bustle people going up the spiral staircase barehanded and encountering others barehanded. Who had been driven upstairs by their curiosity and were now coming down to look for vessels. Others. Cleverer had immediately started hunting for pans and basins only to realize there was not sufficient water in the kitchen.

Suddenly the great room was invaded by mules bearing huge jars and the cowards driving the animals unloaded them and started to carry up the water but they did not know how to climb to the scriptorium and it was a while before some of the scribes told them and when they went up they

Bumped into others rushing down terrified. Jars broke and the water spread over the ground though other jars were passed up the stairs by willing hands. I followed the group and found myself in the scriptorium. Thick smoke came from the access to the library.

The last men who had tried to go up to the east tower were already coming down coughing red eyed and they announced it was no longer possible to penetrate that hell. Then i saw benaud. His face distorted he was coming up from the lower floor with an enormous vessel.

He heard what those coming down were saying and he attacked them. Hell will swallow you are cowards. He turned as if seeking help and saw me and so. He cried the library the library. He did not await my answer but ran to the foot of

The stairs and boldly play singed into the smoke. That was the last time i saw him. I heard a creaking sound from above. Bits of stone mixed with mortar were falling from the ceiling of the scriptorium. The keystone of a vault

Carved in the shape of a flower came loose and almost landed on my head. The floor of the labyrinth was giving way. I rushed downstairs and out into the open air. Some willing servants had brought ladders with which they were trying to reach the

Windows of the upper floors to take water up that way but the highest letters barely extended to the windows of the scriptorium and those who had climbed up were unable to open them from the outside. They sent were down two of them opened from within but at this point

Nobody dared try to go up there. Meanwhile i was looking at the windows of the top floor the whole library by now must have become a single smoking brazier as the fire raced from room to room spreading rapidly among the thousands of dry pages. All the windows were light

A black smoke came from the roof the fire had already spread to the beams. The division which had seemed so solid and try agonists revealed in these circumstances it’s weakness it’s cracks. The walls corroded from within the crumbling stones allowing the flames to reach the wooden elements wherever they were.

Suddenly some windows shattered as if pressed by an inner force the sparks flew out into the open air dotting with fluttering glimpsed the darkness of the night. The strong wind had become lighter. A misfortune because strong it might have blown out the sparks but light had carried them stimulating them

And with them made scraps of parchment swirl in the air the delicate frags nts have an inner torch. At that point an explosion was heard. The floor of the labyrinth had given way at some point in it’s blazing beams must have plunged to the floor below.

Now i saw tongues of flame rise from the scriptorium which was also tenanted by books and cases and by loose papers spread on the desks ready to provoke the sparks. I heard cries of woe from a group of scribes who tore their hair and still thought of

Climbing up heroically to recover their beloved parchments. In vain. The kitchen and refectory were now a crossroads of lost souls rushing in all directions each hindering the others. People bumped into one another fell down those carrying vessels spilled their redemptive contents. The mules brought into the key in that sense

The presence of fire and with a clatter of hoofs dashed toward the exits knocking down the human beings and even their own terrified grooms. It was obvious in any case that this horde of villains and have devout wise but unskilled men with no one in command

Was blocking even what aid might still have arrived. The whole Abbey was in the grip of disorder but this was only the beginning of the tragedy. Pouring from the windows in the roof the triumphant cloud of sparks fostered by the wind was now descending on all sides touching the roof of the church.

Every one knows how the most splendid cathedrals are vulnerable to the sting of fire. The house of god appears beautiful and well defended as the heavenly Jerusalem self thanks to the stone it proudly displays but the walls and ceilings are supported by a fragile if admirable architecture of wood

And if the church of stone recalls the most venerable forests with it’s columns rising high. Boulders oaks to the vaults of the ceilings. These columns often have cores of oak and many of the trappings are also of wood. The altar hers the choirs the painted panels the benches the stalls the candelabra.

And so it was with the herbaceous church. Whose beautiful daughter so fascinated me on the first day. The church caught fire in no time. The monks in the whole population of the place then understood that the very survival of the Abbey was at stake and all began rushing even more earnestly and an

Even greater confusion to deal with the new danger. To be sure the church was more accessible more easily defended in the library. The library had been doomed by it’s own impenetrability by the mystery that protected it by it’s few entrances. The church maternally open to all in the hour

Of prayer was open to all in the hour of succor. But there was no more water or at least very little could be found stored and the Wells supplied it was natural parsimony and at a slow pace that did not correspond to the urgency of the need.

All the monks would have liked to put out the fire of the church but nobody knew how at this point. Moreover the fire was spreading from above and it was difficult to hoist men up to beat on the flames or smother them with dirt or rags.

And when the flames arrived from below it was futile by then to throw earth or sand on them for the ceiling was crashing down on the firefighters striking more than a few of them. And so the cries of regret for the many riches burned were now joined by the cries of

Pain at seared faces crushed limbs bodies buried under a sudden collapse of the high vaults. The wind had become furious again and more furiously helped spread the fire. Immediately after the church the barns and stables caught fire. The terrified animals broke their halters kicked down the doors scattered over the

Ground kneeing mooing bleating grunting horribly. Sparks got the means of many horses and there were infernal creatures ray acing across the grass flaming steeds that trampled everything in their path without goal or respite. I saw old ally nardo wandering around not understanding what was happening knocked

Down by the magnificent brunel is hallowed by fire. The old man was dragged in the dust. Then abandoned there a poor shapeless object. But i had neither the means nor time to succor him or to on his end because similar scenes were taking place everywhere.

The horses in flames had carried the fire to places where the wind had not yet brought it now the forges were burning and the novices house. Hordes of people were running from one end of the compound to the other for no purpose or for illusory purposes.

I saw Nicholas his head wounded his habit in shreds now defeated kneeling in the path from the gate cursing the divine curse. I saw pacific as of tivoli who abandoning all notion of help was trying to seize a crazed mule as it passed i found him after a long search near the cloister.

In his hand he had his traveling sack when the fire was already spreading to the pilgrims hospice. He had gone up to his cell to save at least his most precious belongings. He had collected my sack two and in it i found something to put on.

We paused breathless to watch what was happening around us. By now the Abbey was doomed almost all it’s buildings some more some less had been reached by the fire. Those still intact would not remain so for long. Because everything from the natural elements to the confused work of the rescuers

Was now contributing to the spread of the fire. Only the parts without buildings remained safe the vegetable patch the garden outside the cloister. Nothing more could be done to save the buildings abandoning the idea of saving them we were able to observe everything without danger standing in an open space.

We looked at the church now burning slowly for it is characteristic of these great constructions to Blaze up quickly in their wooden parts and then to agonise for hours sometimes for days. The conflagration of the division was different. Here inflammable material was much more abundant

And the fire having spread all through the scriptorium had invaded the kitchen floor. As for the top floor where once and for hundreds of years there had been the labyrinth it was now virtually destroyed. It was the greatest library in christendom William said. Now he added. The anti Christ is truly at hand.

Because no learning will hinder him any more for that matter we have seen his face tonight. Whose face i asked dazed. Jorge i mean. In that face deformed by hatred of philosophy i saw for the first time the portrait of the antichrist.

Who does not come from the tribe of Judas as his heralds habit or from a far country. The antichrist can be born from piety itself from excessive love of god or of the truth. As the heretic is born from st and the possessed from the sear. Fear prophet said so

And those prepared to die for the truth. For as a rule they make many others die with them often before them at times instead of them. Or he did a diabolical thing because he loved his truth so loudly. That he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood.

Or have feared the second book of Aristotle because it perhaps really did teach how to distort the face of every truth. So that we would not become slaves of our ghosts. Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at truth. To make truth laugh

Because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. But master i ventured sorrowfully. You speak like this now because you are wounded in the depths of your spirit. There is one truth however that you discovered tonight

The one you reached by interpreting the clues you read over the past few days. Whore he has one but you have defeated Jorge because you exposed his plot. There was no plot William said and i discovered it by mistake. The assertion was self contradictory and i couldn’t

Decide whether William really wanted it to be. But it was true that the tracks in the snow led to brunel as i said it was true that a download committed suicide. It was true that finances did not drown in the jar

It was true that the labyrinth was laid out the way you imagined it. It was true that one entered the finest Africa by touching the word quarter. It was true that the mysterious book was by Aristotle. I could go on listing all the two things you discovered with the help of your learning.

I have never doubted the truth of signs ed so they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What i did not understand was the relation among signs. I arrived at Jorge through an apocalyptic pattern that seemed to underlie all the crimes and yet it was accidental.

I arrived at Jorge seeking one criminal. Crimes and we discovered that each crime was committed by a different person. Or by no one. I arrived at Jorge pursuing the plan of a perverse and rational mind and there was no plan or rather. Jorge himself was overcome by his own initial

Design and there began a sequence of causes and con causes and of causes contradicting one another. Which proceeded on their own creating relations that did not stem from any plan. Where is all my wisdom then. I behaved stubbornly pursuing a semblance of order.

When i should have known well that there is no order in the universe. But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. What you say is very fine and so and i thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net or like a ladder built to attain something

But afterward you must throw the ladder away. Because you discover that even if it was useful it was meaningless. Air mods gallica zama the lighter above irvine. Zaw air an ear oof costigan. Is that how you say it. That is how it is set in my language who told you that.

A mystic from your land. He wrote it somewhere i forget where. And it is not necessary for somebody one day to find that manuscript again. The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away. You have no reason to reproach yourself you did your best. A human best

Which is very little. It’s hard to accept the idea that there cannot be an order in the universe because it would offend the free will of god and his omnipotence. So the freedom of god as our condemnation or at least the condemnation of our pride.

I dared for the first and last time in my life to express a theological conclusion. But how can a necessary being exists totally polluted with the possible. What differences there then between god and primer genial chaos. Isn’t affirming god’s absolute omnipotence and his absolute freedom with regard to his own choices.

Tantamount to demonstrating that god does not exist. William looked at me without betraying any feeling in his features and he said. How could a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question. I did not understand the meaning of his words. Do you mean i asked.

That there would be no possible and communicable learning any more at the very criterion of truth we’re lacking. Or do you mean you can no longer communicate what you know because others would not allow you to. At that moment a section of the dormitory roof collapsed with a huge din

Blowing a cloud of sparks into the sky. Some of the sheep and the goats wandering through the grounds went past us. Bleeding horribly. A group of servants also went by us shouting nearly knocking us down. There is too much confusion here William said. None in commodity on a non incumbency only domino’s.

Last page. The Abbey burned for three days and three nights and the last efforts were of no avail. As early as that morning of the seventh day of our sojourn in that place when the survivors were fully aware that no building could be saved.

When the finest constructions showed only their ruined outer walls and the church as if drawing into itself swallowed it’s tower. Even at that point everyone’s will to combat the divine chastisement failed. The rush for the last few buckets of water grew more and more listless.

While the chapter house and the superb apartments of the Abbot were still burning. By the time the fire reached the far side of the various workshops the servants had long since saved as many objects as they could and had chosen to beat the countryside to recapture at least some of the livestock

Which had fled beyond the walls in the confusion of the night. I saw some of the servants venture into what remained of the church i presumed they were trying to get into the crypt to see some precious object before running away.

I do not know whether they succeeded whether the cryptid not already collapsed. Whether the louts did not sink into the bowels of the earth in their attempt to reach the treasure. Meanwhile men were coming up from the village to lend a hand or to try to snatch some further Booty.

The dead for the most part remained among the ruins which were still red hot. On the third day when the wounded had been treated and the corpses found outside had been buried. The monks and all the others collected their belongings and abandoned are still smoking Abby as a place a cursed. They scattered

I do not know where to. William and i left those parts and two horses we found a stray in the wood. We considered them raised newly us by now. We headed east. When we reached Bobby oh again we began to receive bad news of the emperor.

On arriving in Rome he had been crowned by the people. Considering any agreement with John now impossible he had chosen an anti pope Nick plus the fifth. Marcell he has had been named spiritual vicar of Rome but through his fault or his

Weakness things very sad to report were taking place in that city. Priests loyal to the pope and unwilling to say mass were tortured and augustinian prior had been thrown into the lions’ pit on the capital line. Marsalis and John of gendarme had declared John a heretic

And Louis had had him sentenced to death. But the emperor’s misrule was antagonizing the local lords and depleting public funds. Gradually as we heard this news we delayed our descent to Rome and i realized that William did not want to find himself witnessing events that would dash his hopes.

When we came to composer we learned that roam and rebelled against Louis who had moved back up towards pisa. While John’s legates were triumphantly entering the papal city. Meanwhile Michael of js aina had realized that his presence in avignon was producing no results. Indeed he feared for his life.

So he had fled joining Louis and pisa. Soon foreseeing events and learning that the bavarian would move on to Munich we reversed our route and decided to proceed there also because William since that Italy was becoming unsafe for him. In the ensuing months and years

Louis saw the alliance of his supporters the ghibli lords dissolve. And the following year the anti pope Nicholas was dis surrender to John presenting himself with a rope around his neck. When we came to Munich i had to take leave of my good master amid many tears. His destiny was uncertain

And my family preferred for me to return to milk. After that tragic night when William revealed to me his dismay before the ruins of the Abbey as if by tacit agreement we had not spoken again of that story. Nor did we mention it in the course of our sorrowful farewell.

My master gave me much good advice about my future studies and presented me with the glasses Nicholas had made for him since he had his own back again. I was still young he said to me but one day they would come in handy.

And truly i am wearing them on my nose now as i write these lines. Then he embraced me with a father’s tenderness and dismissed me. I never saw him again. I learned much later that he had died during the great plague that raged through Europe towards the middle of this century.

I pray always that god received his soul and forgave him the many acts of pride that his intellectual vanity had made him commit. Years later as a grown man i had occasion to make a journey to Italy sent by my abbott.

I could not resist temptation and on my return i went far out of my way to revisit what remained of the Abbey. The two villages on the slopes of the mountain were deserted the lands around them uncultivated. When i climbed up to the top. A spectacle of desolation and death appeared

Before my eyes which moistened with tears. Of the great and magnificent constructions that once adorned that place. Only scattered ruins remained as it happened before with the monuments of the ancient pagans in the city of Rome. Ivy covered the shreds of walls. Columns the few architraves still intact.

Weeds invaded the ground on all sides and there was no telling where the vegetables and the flowers had once grown. Only the location of the cemetery was recognizable. Because of some graves that still Rose above the level of the terrain. Sole sign of life some birds of prey hunted lizards and serpents that

Like basle discs slithered among the stones or crawled over the walls. Of the church door only a few traces remained eroded by mold. Half of the tympanum survived and i still glimpsed their. Dilated by the elements dulled by likens the left eye of the nth around Christ and something of the lion’s face.

The inefficient except for the south wall which was in ruins seemed yet to stand and defy the course of time. The two outer towers over the cliff appeared almost untouched but all the windows were empty sockets who slimy tears were rotting vines.

Inside the work of art destroyed became confused with the work of nature and across vast stretches of the kitchen the i ran to the open heavens through the breach of the upper floors and the roof. Fallen like fallen angels. Everything that was not green with moss was still

Black from the smoke of so many decades ago. Poking about in the rubble i found at times scraps of parchment that had drifted down from the scriptorium and the library and had survived like treasures buried in the earth.

I began to collect them as if i were going to piece together the torn pages of a book. Then i noticed that in one of the towers there arose tottering but still intact a circular staircase to the scriptorium and from there.

By climbing a sloping bit of the ruin i could reach the level of the library. Which however was only a sort of gallery next to the outside walls looking down into the void at every point. Along one stretch of wall i found a bookcase

Still miraculously erect having come through the fire i cannot say how. It was rotted by water and consumed by termites. In it there were still a few pages. Other remnants i found by rummaging in the ruins below. Mine was a poor harvest. But i spent a whole day reaping it

As if from those. Dz act a member of the library a message might reach me. Fragments of parchment had faded others permitted the glimpse of an images shadow or the ghost of one or more words. At times i found pages where whole sentences were legible. More often

Intact bindings protected by what had once been metal studs. Ghosts of books apparently intact on the outside but consumed within. It sometimes i have page had been saved. And in cheap it was discernible a title. I collected every relic i could find filling to traveling sex with them abandoning things

Useful to me in order to save that miserable horde. Along the return journey and afterward at melk i spent many many hours trying to decipher those remains. Often from a word or a surviving image. I could recognize what the work had been.

When i found in time other copies of those books i studied them with love as if destiny had left me this bequest. As if having identified the destroyed car if he were a clear sign from heaven that said to me to lay at legion. At the end of my patient reconstruction.

I had before me a kind of lesser library a symbol of the greater vanished one. A library made up of fragments quotations unfinished sentences. Amputated stumps of books. The more i reread this list the more i am convinced it is the result of chance and contains no message.

But these incomplete pages have accompanied me through all the life that has been left me to live since then. I have often consulted them like an oracle and i have almost had the impression. That what i have written on these pages which you will now read unknown reader. Is only a gentle

Have figured him. An immense acrostic that says and repeats nothing but what those fragments have suggested to me. Nor do i know whether thus far i have been speaking of them or they have spoken through my mouth. But whichever of the two possibilities may be correct.

The more i repeat to myself the story that has emerged from them the less i managed to understand whether in it there is a design that goes beyond the natural sequence of the events and the times that connect them.

And it is a hard thing for this old monk on the threshold of death. Not to know whether the letter he has written contain means some hidden meaning. Or more than one or many. Or none at all. But this inability of mind to see is perhaps the

Effect of the shadow that the great darkness. As it approaches his casting on the aged world. As to be Gloria nook of babylonia. Where are the snows of yesteryear. The earth is dancing the death of macabre. At times it seems to me that the danube is crowded

With ships loaded with fools going toward a dark place. All i can do now is be silent. O quam syllabary. Qualm you condem at suave a easter dairy and solitude in a at to chariot look we can Dale. Soon i shall be joined with my beginning

And i no longer believe that it is the glory of god of whom the abbots of my order spoke to me. Or of joy as the mine rides believed in those days. Perhaps not even a piety. Got the Stein latter needs. In rural kind new nook here.

I shall soon enter this broad desert perfectly level and boundless where the truly pious hearts that comes in bliss. I shall sink into the divine shadow. In a dumb silence and an ineffable union and in this thinking all equality and all inequality shall be lost

And in that abyss my spirit will lose itself and will not know the equal or the unequal or anything else and all differences will be forgotten. I shall be in the simple foundation in the silent desert where diversity is never seen. In the privacy where no one finds himself in his proper place.

I shall fall into the silent and uninhabited divinity where there is no work and no image. It is cold in the scriptorium my thumb aches. I leave this manuscript i do not know for whom. I no longer know what it is about. Stat Rosa Pristina dominee. Domina knew the tiny moose. Postscript.

Rosa calle bravo in Canada. They sent us prison to osa the granny economy in banjara. Gompa lozano e gu stosur. Verano desander under most ser tambien said as these to each other. One Ines de la Cruz. A Mexican lyric poet. Who lived from sixteen fifty one to sixteen ninety five. The lines read.

Red Rose growing in the Meadow you want yourself bravely bathed in crimson and Carmen. A rich and fragrant show. But no. Being fair. You will be unhappy soon. The title and the meaning. Since the publication of the name of the Rose i have received a number of letters

From readers who want to know the meaning of the final Latin examiner and why this ex amateur inspired the book’s title. I answered that the verses from day contempt to Monday by Bernard of more lay a twelfth century benedictine. Whose poem is a variation on the will be soon

To theme most familiar in the yours later. Meals only near downtown. But at the usual to pose the great of yesteryear. The once famous cities the lovely princesses everything disappears into the void. Bernard adds that all these departed things leave. Only or at least pure names behind them.

I remember that abelard uses the example of the sentence new la Rosa este to demonstrate how language can speak of both the nonexistent and the destroyed. And having said this. I leave the reader to arrive at his own conclusions. A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work

Otherwise he would not have written a novel which is a machine for generating interpretations. But one of the chief obstacles to his maintaining this virtuous principle is the fact that a novel must have a title. A title unfortunately is in itself a key to interpretation.

We cannot escape the notions prompted by the red and the black or war and peace. The titles that show most respect for the reader are those that confined themselves to the name of the hero such as David Copperfield or Robinson crusoe. But even this reference to the eponymous character

Can represent an undue interference of the author. Pair goryeo focuses the reader’s attention on the figure of the old father. Though the novel is also the story of rustin yak. Or a voter alias Colleen. Perhaps the best course is to be honestly dishonest as duma was.

It is clear that the three musketeers is in reality the tale of the fourth. But such a luxury is rare and it may be that the author can allow himself to enjoy it only by mistake. The novel had another working title which was the Abbey of the crime.

I rejected it because it concentrates the reader’s attention entirely on the mystery story and might wrongly lure and mislead purchasers looking for an action packed yarn. My dream was to call the book ad so of milk. A totally neutral title because ad so after all was the narrating voice.

But in my country publishers dislike proper names and even firmer and Lucia. The original title of the first version of man’s on his novel he promises posey the betrothed. Was in its day recycled in a different form. Otherwise Italian fiction offers few examples of this kind of title. Limone your boreal. Ruby.

May telo. A handful compared with the legion of. Cousin Betty’s very lindens arm ounces and Tom Jones’s that people other literatures as. The idea of calling my book the name of the Rose came to me virtually by chance and i liked it because the Rose is a symbolic figure

So rich and meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left. Dante’s mystic Rose. And go lovely Rose the wars of the roses. Rose thou art sick too many rings around Rosie arose by by any other name a Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose the rosicrucian.

The title rightly disoriented the reader who was unable to choose just one interpretation. And even if he were to catch the possible nominal list readings of the concluding verse. He would come to them only at the end having previously made god only knows what other choices.

A title must muddle the reader’s ideas not regiment them. Nothing is of greater consolation to the author of a novel than the discovery of readings he had not conceived but which are then prompted by his readers. When i wrote theoretical works my attitude toward reviewers was judicial.

Have they or have they not understood what i meant. With a novel the situation is completely different. I am not saying that the author may not find a discovered reading perverse. But even if he does he must remain silent allow others to challenge it text in hand. For that matter

The large majority of readings reveal effects of sense that one had not thought of but what does not having thought of them mean. A French scholar earache i grew bay. As discovered subtle paragraphs that link the simple in the sense of the poor. With simples in the sense of medicinal herbs

And then finds that i speak of the tear of heresy. I could reply that the term simple in both uses recurs in the literature of the p period. As does the expression mallaby anta the tear or poisonous herb of heresy.

Further i was well aware of the example of primus on the possible double reading seen the auditions call it double isotope. That occurs when the herbalist is referred to as a friend of the simple. Did i know that i was playing with programmes.

It is of no importance to reply now the text is there and produces it’s own effects of sense. As i read the reviews of the novel i felt a thrill of satisfaction when i found a critic. The first were genever a bump jani and Laura gustafson.

Who quoted a remark of Williams made at the end of the trial. What terrifies you most impurity and so asks. And William answers haste. I loved and still love those two lines very much. But then a reader pointed out to me that on the same page.

Bernard goetz threatening the seller with torture says. Justice is not inspired by haste as the pseudo apostles believe and the justice of god has centuries at it’s disposal. And the reader rightly asked me what connection i had meant to establish between the haste feared by William

And the absence of haste extolled by Bernard. At that point i realized that a disturbing thing had happened. The exchange between ad so and William does not exist in the manuscript i added this brief dialogue in the galleys for reasons of considered ie.

I needed to insert another scantron before giving Bernard the floor again. And naturally as i was making wm loathe haste and with great conviction which is why i then like the remark very much. I completely forgot that a little later Bernard speaks of haste. If you reread Bernard’s speech without Williams

It becomes simply a stereotyped expression. The sort of thing we would expect from a judge a commonplace on the ot author of all are equal before the law. Alas when juxtaposed with the haste mentioned by William. The haste mentioned by Bernard literally create an effect of sense

And the reader is justified in wondering if the two men are saying the same thing. Or if the loathing of haste expressed by William is not imperceptibly different from the loathing of haste expressed by by Bernard. The text is there and produces it’s own effects.

Whether i wanted it this way or not we are now faced with a question and ambiguous provocation and i myself feel embarrassment in interpreting this conflict though i realize a meaning lurks there. Perhaps many meanings to. The author should die once he has finished writing.

So as not to trouble the path of the text. Telling the process. The author must not interpret but he may tell why and how he wrote his book. So called texts of poetics are not always useful in understanding the work that inspired them but they help us understand how to solve the

Technical problem which is the production of a work. Poe in his philosophy of composition tells how he wrote the raven. He does not tell us how we should read it but what problems he set himself in order to achieve a poetic effect.

And i would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings. Without ever being completely consumed. The writer or painter or sculptor or composer always knows what he is doing and how much it costs him. He knows he has to solve a problem.

Perhaps the original data are obscure passive obsessive. No more than a yearning or a memory. But then the problem is solved at the writer’s desk as he interrogates the material on which he he is working material that reveals natural laws of it’s own but at the same time contains the recollection

Of the culture with which it is loaded. The echo of intertextuality. When the author tells us he worked in a raptors of inspiration he is lying. Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. Talking about a famous poem of his i forget which

Le martine said that it had come to him in a single flash on a stormy night in a forest. When he died the manuscripts were found with revisions and variance and the poem proved to be the most worked out in all the French literature.

When the writer or the artist in general says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules. A child speaks his mother tongue properly though he could never write out it’s grammar.

But the granary and is not only one who knows the rules of the language. They are well known I’ll be at all consciously also to the child. The grammarian is merely the one who knows how and why the child knows the language.

Telling how you wrote something does not mean proving it is well written. Post said that the effect of the work is one thing and the knowledge of the process is another. When kandinsky and Clay tell us how they paint neither is saying he is better than the other.

When Michelangelo says that sculpture amounts to freeing from the block of stone the figure already defined in it. He is not saying that the Vatican peta is superior to the ronda nini. Sometimes the most illuminating pages on the artistic process have been written by

Minor artists who achieved modest effects but knew how to ponder their own processes. Missouri. Ratio green oh Aaron copeland. Naturally the middle ages. I wrote a novel because i had again to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story. Man as a storytelling animal by nature.

I began writing in march of nineteen seventy eight prodded by a seminal idea. I felt like poisoning a monk. I believe a novel is always born of an idea like this the rest is the flesh that is added along the way. The idea must have originated even earlier.

Afterward i found a notebook dated nineteen seventy five in which i had written down a list of monks in an unspecified monastery. Nothing else. At the beginning i read or feel as treated it was on which i had bought twenty years before the bookstore by the sin.

Purely out of loyalty to wee smalls lubbock. Since none of the poisons satisfied me i asked a biologist friend to suggest a drug that possessed certain properties. The possibility of being absorbed by the skin when handled. I promptly tore up his letter of reply in which he

Said he knew of no poison that would serve my purpose. It was a document that read in another context could lead to the gallows. At first my monks were going to live in a contemporary convent i had in mind an investigator monk who read the leftwing newspaper il manifesto.

In Italy even the left as it’s own heretics. But in any convent or Abbey countless medieval memories survive so i began rummaging among my files. After all. I was a medievalist in hibernation. I had published a book on medieval aesthetics and nineteen fifty six another hundred

Pages on the subject and nineteen sixty nine. Then a few scattered essays and had returned to the medieval tradition in nineteenth sixty two for my work on Joyce. In nineteen seventy two came along study of the apocalypse and the illuminations of the commentary by be adhesively a banner.

So the middle ages were kept limber. I dug out a huge amount of material file cards photocopies notebooks accumulated since nineteen fifty two and originally intended for other still vague purposes. A history of monsters or an analysis of medieval encyclopedias or a theory of lists.

At a certain point i said to myself that since the middle ages were my day to day fantasy i might as well write a novel actually set in that period. As i have said in interviews i know the present only through the television screen.

Whereas i have a direct knowledge of the middle ages. When we used a light bonfires on the grass in the country my wife would accuse me of never looking at the sparks that flew up among the trees and glided along the electricity wires.

Then when she read the chapter on the fire she said so you were looking at the sparks. And i answered no but i knew how a medieval monk would have seen them. Ten years ago in a letter from author to publisher accompanying my commentary on commentary to the apocalypse by be adhesively urbana.

I confessed to Franco Maria ricci. However you choose to look at it i arrived at scholarship by crossing symbolic forests inhabited by unicorns and griffins. And by comparing the pinnacle then squared construction of cathedrals to the barbs of exegetical malice concealed in the tetragonal formulas of the samurai.

Wandering between the vico del astronomy. And sister ocean naves. Engaging in affable colloquy with the cultivated and sumptuous Clooney ak monks under the surveillance of a plump and rationalistic aquinas. Tempted by honorius Augusta dooney answers by his fantastic geographies which explained simultaneously quarry and pyrexia coitus non-continuous that

And how to reach the lost island. Or how to capture a basler sc when you are armed only with a pocket mirror and unshakable faith in the bestiary. This taste and this passion have never abandoned me even if later for moral reasons and also material ones. Being a medievalist usually implies having considerable

Wealth and the possibility of roaming among distant libraries microfilming unheard of manuscripts. I have pursued other things. And so the middle ages have remained if not my profession my hobby and a constant temptation. I see the period everywhere transparently overlaying my daily concerns which do not look medieval though they are.

Stolen holidays under the vaults of Odin where they are big revolt today writes manuals on the devil. They’re binding impregnated with sulfur. Rustic ecstasies at war sack and conch. Dazzled by the elders of the apocalypse or by the devils thrusting damned souls into boiling cauldrons.

And at the same time refreshing stir ID of the enlightened monk bede. Rational comforts sought in arkham to understand the mystery of the sign where sir sewer is still obscure. And so on and on with unceasing homesickness for the peregrine to your sancti brand Danny.

Verifications of our thinking carried out through the book of kells. Have revisited in the Celtic canon gars. Relations between power and masses who have been persuaded checked against the diaries of bishop suchet. The mask. Actually i decided not only to narrate about the middle ages. I decided to narrate in the middle ages

And through the mouth of a chronicler of the period. I was a novice narrator and in the past i had looked at narrators from the opposite side of the barricade. I was embarrassed at telling a story i felt like a drama critic who suddenly exposes himself behind the footlights.

Finds himself watched by those who until then had been his accomplices in the seats out front. Is it possible to say it was a beautiful morning at the end of November without feeling like snoopy. But what if i had snoopy say it. If that is

It was a beautiful morning was said by someone capable of saying it because in his day it was still possible still not shop worn. A mask that was what i needed. I set about reading or rereading medieval chroniclers to acquire their rhythm and their innocence.

They would speak for me and i would be freed from suspicion. Free from suspicion but not from the echoes of intertextuality. Thus i rediscovered what writers have always known and have told us again and again. Books always speak of other books and every story tells a story that has already been told.

Helmer knew this and ariosto knew this new dimension rabelais and cervantes. My story then could only begin with the discovered manuscript and even this would be naturally a quotation. So i wrote the introduction immediately setting my narrative on the fourth level of encasement inside three other narratives.

I am saying what valet said that my beyond said that and so said. I was now free of every fear and at this point i stopped writing for twelve months i stopped because i discovered something else i already knew and everyone knew but that i came to understand more clearly as i worked.

I discovered namely that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter like the story told by Genesis. We all have to choose our role models as Woody Allen puts it. The novel as cosmological event. What i mean

Is there to tell a story you must first of all construct a world furnished as much as possible down to the slightest details. If i were to construct a river i would need two banks and if on the left bank i put a fisherman

And if i were to give this fisherman a wrathful character and a police record. Then i could start writing translating into words everything it would inevitably happen. What does a fisherman do. He fishes and then a whole sequence of actions more or less obligatory. And then what happened.

Either the fish are biting or they are not if they bite the fisherman catches them and then goes home happy. End of story. If there are no fish since he is a wrathful type he will perhaps become angry perhaps he will break his fishing rod. This is not much

Still it is already a sketch. But there is an Indian proverb that says sit on the bank of a river and wait your enemy’s corpse will soon float by. And what if a corpse were to come down the stream. Since this pass mobility is inherent in an intertextual area like a river.

We must also bear in mind that my fisherman has a police record. Will he want to risk trouble what will he do will he run away and pretend not to have seen the corpse. Will he feel vulnerable because this after all is the corpse of the man he hated.

Wrathful as he is will he fly into a rage because he was not able to read personally his longed for vengeance. As you see as soon as one’s invented world has been furnished just a little there is already the beginning of a story. There is already the beginning of a style too because

A fisherman who is fishing should establish a slow fluvial pace Cadence by his waiting which should be paid patient but also marked by the fits of his impatient wrath. The problem is to construct the world. The words were practically come on their own. Rent and a very basic went to her.

Grasp the subject and the words will follow. This i believe is the opposite of what happened with poetry which is more a case of verbatim a rest went to her grasped the words in the subject will follow. The first year of work on my novel was devoted to the construction of the world.

Long registers of all the books that could be found in a medieval library. Lists of names and personal data for many characters. A number of whom were then excluded from the story. In other words i had to know who the rest of the monks were. Those who do not appear in the book.

It was not necessary for the reader to know them but i had to know them. Whoever said that fiction must compete with the city directory. Perhaps it must also compete with the planning board. Therefore i conducted long architectural investigations studying photographs and

Floorplans in the encyclopedia of architecture to establish the arrangement of the Abbey the distances even a number of steps in a spiral staircase. The film director Mark of hariri once said to me that my dialogue is like a movies because it lasts exactly the right length of time. It had to.

When two of my characters spoke while walking from the refectory to the cloister i wrote with the plan before my eyes and when they reached their destination. They stopped talking. It is necessary to create constraints in order to invent freely. In poetry the constraint can be imposed by meter foot

Rhyme by what has been called the verse according to the ear. See Charles Olson projective verse. Poetry new York three nineteen fifty. Infection the surrounding world provides the console St. This has nothing to do with realism even if it explains also realism. A completely unreal world can be constructed in which

Asses fly and princesses are restored to life by a kiss. But that world purely possible and unrealistic. Must exist according to structures defined at the outset. We have to know whether it is a word world where a Princess can be restored to life only by the kiss of a prince.

Or also by that of a witch and whether the Princess’s kiss transforms only frogs into princes or also for example armadillos. One element of my world was history and that is why i read and re-read so many medieval chronicles

And as i read them i realized that the novel had to include things that in the beginning had never crossed my mind such as the debate over poverty and the inquisitions hostility towards the front of the jelly. For example. Why are the fourteenth century fried jelly in my book.

If i had to write a medieval story i auto set it in the twelfth or thirteenth century because i knew them better than the fourteenth. But i needed an investigator. English if possible intertextual quotation with the great gift of observation and a special sense nativity and interpreting evidence.

These qualities could be found only among the franciscans and. Only after Roger bacon. Furthermore we find a developed theory of signs only with the alchemists or rather it also existed before but either the interpretation of signs then was of a symbolic nature or else had tended to read ideas and notions in signs.

It is one lie between bacon and arkham that signs are used to acquire knowledge of individuals. So i had to set the story in the fourteenth century much to my irritation because i could not move easily in that period. More reading ensued with the discovery that a fourteenth century franciscan.

Even an englishman could not ignore the debate about poverty especially if he was a friend follower or but why does everything take place at the end of November thirteen twenty seven. Because by December Michael of two xena is already in avignon.

This is what i mean by furnishing a world in a historical novel. Some elements like the number of steps can be determined by the author but others like the movements of Michael depend on the real world which in this kind of novel happens to coincide with the possible world of the story.

But November is too early i also needed to have a pig slaughtered. Why. The answer is simple. So that the corpse could be thrust head down into a great jar of blood. And why did i need this. Because the second trumpeted the apocalypse says. I could not change the apocalypse after all

It was a part of this world. Now it so happens i made inquiries that pigs are not slaughtered until cold weather comes and November might be too early. Unless i situated the Abbey in the mountains. So there would already be snow. Otherwise my story might have taken place in the planes at composer

Or at conch. The constructed world will then tell us how the story must proceed. Everyone asks me why Jorge with his name suggests board hates and why bore he says so wicked. But i cannot say. I wanted a blind man who guarded a library it seemed a good narrative idea to me.

And library plus blind man can only equal born Hayes also because deaths must be paid. And further it was through Spanish commentaries and illumination that the apocalypse influenced the entire middle ages. But when i put Jorge in the library i did not yet know he was the murderer.

He acted on his own so to speak. And it must not be thought that this is an idealistic position as if i were saying that the characters have an autonomous life and the author and a kind of trance makes them behave as they themselves direct him.

That kind of nonsense belongs in term papers. The fact is that the characters are obliged to act according to the laws of the world in which they live. In other the words the narrator is the prisoner of his own premises. Another fine story was that of the labyrinth.

All the labyrinths i had heard of and i had sent arc Angeles excellent study at hand. Where outdoor labyrinths. They could be extremely complicated and full of circle of allusions. But i needed an indoor labyrinth. Have you ever seen an open air library.

And if it was too complicated with too many passages and inner rooms not enough air would circulate whereas circulation of air was necessary to feed the fire. This the fact that the division had to burn at the end was very clear to me but also for cosmological historical reasons.

In the middle ages cathedrals and convince burned like tinder. Imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a world war two movie in the pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames. So after i had worked for two or three months constructing a suitable labyrinth i

Ended up having to add some slits to make absolutely sure there would be enough air. Who speaks. I had many problems i wanted an enclosed place a concentrate of universe. And to enclose it better it seemed a good idea for me to introduce besides unity of place also unity of time.

Since the unity of action was doubtful. A benedictine Abbey therefore it’s life marked by the canonical hours. Ulysses may have been an unconscious model because of it’s structure rigidly bound by the hours of the day. But another was the magic mountain. With it’s mountainous sensitive situation where so many conversations could take place.

The conversation posed many problems for me but i sold these as i wrote. There is a theme that has been scantily discussed in theories of narrative. That of the turn ancillaries. The devices that is through which the narrator grants the floor to the various characters. Look at the differences among these five exchanges.

One. How are you. Not bad and you. Two. How are you John said. Not bad and you Peter said. Three. How John said are you and Peter replied at once not bad and you. Four. How are you John inquired anxiously. Not bad and you Peter cackled. Five. John said how are you.

Not bad Peter replied in a dull voice. Then with an enigmatic smile he added and you. In all cases except the first two we see that the author intrudes on the story imposing his own point of view. He intervenes with a personal comment

To suggest how the words of the two speakers should be interpreted emotionally. But is this intention really absent from the first two apparently a sceptic examples. And is the reader freer in these except the cases. Where he could undergo an emotional imposition without being aware of it.

Remember the apparent neutrality of Hemingway dialogue. Or is he freer in the other cases where at least he knows the game the author is playing. It is a problem of style and ideological problem a problem of poetry like the choice of an internal rhyme or an assonance. Or the introduction of a paragraph.

A certain coherence must be found. In my case it was perhaps made easier because all the dialogue is reported by ad so and it is obvious that and so imposes his own point of view on the whole narrative. But the dialogue created another problem for me. How medieval could it be.

In other words as i was writing the book. I realized that it was taking on an opera buffa structure with long wretched teams and elaborate arias. The arias the description of the great door for example imitated the solemn rhetoric of the middle ages and there was no dearth of models for this.

But the dialogue. At a certain point i feared it would sound like Agatha christie while the areas where suchet or st Bernard. I re-read medieval romances works from the age of chivalry and i realized that though i was taking just a bit of licence i was still respecting a narrative and

Poetic usage not unknown to the middle ages. But the problem tormented me for a long time and i am not sure i ever resolve these changes of register between Arya and wretched at Eve. Another problem. The encasement of the voices or rather of the narrative point of view.

I knew that i was narrating a story with the words of another person having declared in the preface that this person’s words had been filtered through at least two other narrative points of view that may be young and out of the Abe valet even if they had supposedly operated only as philologists

But who believes that. The problem arose again however within answers first person narration and so at the age of eighty is telling about what he saw at the age of eighteen. Who is speaking. The eighteen year old and so are the eighty year old. Both obviously and this is deliberate.

The trick was to make the old and so constantly present as he ponders what he remembers having seen and fell lt as the young ed so. The model i did not reread the book distant memories sufficed was Serena’s zeit bloom in doctor faustus. This enunciated duplicity fascinated and excited me very much.

Also because to return to what i was saying about the mask. In doubling ad so i was once more doubling the series of interstices of screens ones said between me as a biographical personality me as a narrating author the first person narrator and the characters narrated including the narrative voice.

I felt more and more shielded and the whole experience recalled to me. I mean physically with the clarity of Madeleine dipped in lime flower tea. Certain childish game games in which i pretended i was in a submarine under the blankets and from it sent messages to my sister.

Under the blankets of the next bed both of us cut off from the outside world and perfectly free to travel like a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. And so was very important for me.

From the outset i wanted to tell the whole story with it’s mysteries it’s political and theological events it’s ambiguities. Through the voice of someone who experiences the events records the mall with the photographic fidelity of an adolescent but does not understand them and will not understand them fully even as an old man

Since he then chooses a flight into the divine nothingness. Which was not what his master had taught him. To make everything understood through the words of one who understands nothing. Reading the reviews i realized that this is one of the aspects of the novel that impressed cultivated readers least.

Or in any case i would say that few made a point of it. But i wonder now if this was not one of the features that made the novel readable for unsophisticated readers. They identified with the innocence of the narrator and felt exonerated even when they did not understand everything.

I gave them back their fear and trembling in the face of sex unknown languages difficulties of thought. Mysteries of political life. These are things i understand now aparate cu. But perhaps i was then transferring to add so many my adolescent fears certainly in his amorous palpitations

But always with the assurance that i could act through another person. In fact ad so experiences his love sufferings only through the words in which the doctors of the church discussed love. Art is an escape from personal emotion as both Joyce and eliot had taught me. The struggle against emotion was hard.

I wrote a beautiful prayer modeled on the plaint of nature violinist the insolence to be said by William in a crucial moment. Then i realized that both of us would be overcome by emotion i as author and his character. I as author should not succumb for reasons of poetics

He has character could not because he was made of different stuff and his emotions were all mental or repressed. So i cut that page. After a friend of mine read the book she said to me my only objection is that William never has a twinge of pity.

I quoted this to another friend who said that’s right that is the style of his pity. Perhaps this is so and so be it. Preparation. And so was also useful to me in dealing with another matter. I could have had the story unfold in the middle ages where

Everyone knew what was being talked about. As in a contemporary story in which if a character says the church would not approve his divorce. It is not necessary to explain what the church is and why it does not approve the divorce. But in a historical novel this cannot be done.

Because the purpose of the narration is also to make clearer to us contemporaries what happened then and how what happened then matters to us as well. Hence the risk of what i would call saga prism. When the characters in Emilio saw Gary’s adventures escape through the forest

Pursued by enemies and stumble over a bay a bab route. The narrator suspends the action in order to give us a botany lesson on the bay a bed. Now this has become to pose charming like the defects of those we have loved. But it should not be done.

I rewrote hundreds of pages to avoid this kind of lapse but i do not recall ever realizing quite how i solved the problem. I became aware of it only two years afterward when i was trying to figure out why the

Book was being read by people who surely could not like such cultivated books. Ad says narrative style is based on that rhetorical device called preparation or para lapses or passing over. Here is an example from tudor times. I do not say that thou received bribes of

Thy fellows i busy myself not in this thing. The speaker in other words claims he will not speak of something that everyone knows perfectly well and as he is saying this he speaks of the thing. This is more or less the way add so mentioned people and events as being well known

But still does speak of them. As for those people and events that ad says reader. A German at the end of the century could not know since they had taken place in Italy at the beginning of the century. And so discusses them without hesitation and in a didactic tone.

Because this was the style of the medieval chronicler eager to introduce encyclopedic notions every time something was mentioned. After a friend not the same one as before had read the manuscript she told me she had been struck by the journalistic tone of the story which was not

The tone of a novel but that of a newspaper article. At first i was offended. Then i realized what she had unwittingly perceived. This is how the chroniclers of those centuries tell things. And if the Italians still use the word cronulla to define the local news page in the paper.

It is because chronicles have gone on being written over the centuries. Pace. But there was another reason for including those long didactic passages. After reading the manuscript my friends and editors suggested i abbreviate the first hundred pages which they found very difficult and demanding. Without thinking twice i refused because. As i insisted.

If somebody wanted to enter the Abbey and live there for seven days he. If the Abbey’s own pace. If he could not he would never manage to read the whole book. Therefore those first hundred pages are like a penance

Or an initiation and if someone does not like them so much the worse for him he can stay at the foot of the hill. Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains you have to learn the rhythm of respiration acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away.

The same thing is true of poetry. Just recall how unbearable poems become when they are recited by actors who wanting to interpret ignore the meter of the verse make dramatic and jamun as if they were declaiming pros concern themselves with the content and not with the rhythm.

To read a classical poem in rhyme you have to assume the singing rhythm the poet wanted. It it is better to assign Dante. As if he had written children’s jingles. Then pursue only his meanings to the exclusion of everything else. In narrative the breathing is derived not from the sentences

But from broader units from the scantron of events. Some novels breathe like gazelles others like whales or elephants. Harmony lies not in the length of the breath but in it’s regularity. And if at a certain point but this should not occur too often the breathing bray takes off and a chapter or a

Sequence ends before the breath is completely drawn. This irregularity can play an important role in the economy of the story. It can market turning point a surprise development. At least this is what we find in great writers. A great novel is one in which the author always knows just when to accelerate.

When to apply the brakes and how to handle the clutch within a basic rhythm that remains constant. In music there is roboto but if you robbed too much you end up like those bad performers who believe that exaggerated rubato is all you need to play chopin.

I’m not talking about how i solved my problems but about how i pose them and if i were to say i oppose them consciously i would be lying. There is a composite of thought that thinks even in the rhythm of fingers tapping on the keys of the typewriter.

I would like to give an example of how storytelling means thinking with your fingers. Obviously the love making scene in the kitchen is constructed entirely on basis of quotations from religious texts. From the song of songs to st Bernard and Jean de fe call. Or Saint hildegard of bingen.

Even readers unfamiliar with the medieval mystic i realize this if they had any ear. But now if someone asks me the source of the quotations or where one ends and another begins i cannot answer. In fact i had dozens and dozens of file cards with all sorts of texts

And sometimes pages of books photocopies. Countless far more than i used. But when i wrote the scene i wrote it all in one sitting i polished it later as if to cover it with a uniform finish though the seams would be less visible.

So as i was writing i had at my elbow all the texts flung in no order and my i would fall first on this one and then on that. As i copied out a passage immediately linking it to another. In first draft i wrote this chapter more quickly than any of the others.

I realised afterward that i was trying to follow with my fingers the rhythm of answers loved making and therefore i could not pause to select the most cogent quotation. What made the quotation cogent at that point was the pace at which i inserted it. I rejected with my eyes those quotations that

Would have arrested the rhythm of my fingers. I cannot say that the writing of the action lasted as long as the action. For there are times when love making lasts fairly long. But i tried to shorten as much as possible the difference between the duration of the

Scene and the duration of the writing. And i say writing not in the bar fusion sense but in the typewriters since. I mean writing as a physical material act. And i am speaking of the rhythms of the body not of emotions. The emotion filtered at this point.

Had all come before with the decision to liken mystic ecstasy to erotic ecstasy. It had come when i first read and chose the texts to be employed. Afterward there was no emotion and so was making love not i. I had only to translate his emotion into a movement of eyes and fingers.

As if i had decided to tell a story of love by playing the drum. Constructing the reader. Rhythm pace penitents. For whom for me. No certainly not. For the reader. While you write you are thinking of a reader.

As the painter while he paints his thinking of the viewer who will look at the picture. After making a brush stroke he takes two or three steps back and studies the effect. He looks at the picture that is the way the viewer will admire it in proper lighting

When it is hanging on a wall. When a work is finished a dialogue is established between the text and it’s readers. The author is excluded. While the work is in progress the dialogue is double. There is the dialogue between that text and all other previously written texts.

Books are made only from other books and around other books. And there is the dialogue between the author and his model reader. I have theorized about this in other works such as the role of the reader and before that in opera aperta. Nor was i the inventor of the idea.

It may be that when he writes the author has a certain empirical audience in mind. This is how the founders of the modern novel wrote. Richardson fielding the foe. Who were writing for merchants and their wives. But Joyce too is writing for an audience imagining an ideal reader affected by an ideal insomnia.

In both cases whether the writer believes he is writing for a public standing there money in hand just outside the door or whether he needs to write for a reader still to come. Writing means constructing through the text one’s own model reader. What does it mean to imagine a reader able to overcome

The penitential obstacle of the first hundred pages. It means precisely. Writing one hundred pages for the purpose of constructing a reader suitable for what comes afterward. Is there a writer who writes only for posterity. No not even if he says so himself

Because since he is not nostradamus he can conceive of posterity only on the model of what he knows of his contemporaries. Is there a writer who writes only for a handful of readers. Yes. If by this you mean that the model reader he imagine

Jones has slight chance of being made flesh in any number. But even this writer writes in the hope. Not all that secret that his book itself will create and in great quantity many new exemplars of this reader desired and pursued with such craftsmanlike precision and postulated encouraged by his text.

If there is a difference it lies between the text that seeks to produce a new reader and the text that tries to fulfill the wishes of the readers already to be found in the street. In the latter case we have the book written constructed according to an effective mass production formula.

The author carries out a kind of market analysis and adapts his work to it’s results. Even from a distance it is clear that he is working by a formula. You have only to analyze the various novels he has written and you note that in all of them after changing

Names placed his distinguishing features he has told the same story. The one that the public was already asking of him. But when a writer plans something new and conceives a different kind of reader he wants to be. Not a market analyst cataloguing expressed demands but rather

A philosopher who senses the patterns of the zeitgeist. He wants to reveal to his public what it should want. Even if it does not know it. He wants to reveal the re leader to himself. If manzoni had been thinking of the public’s wishes he would have had the formula handy.

The historical novel with a medieval setting with illustrious characters as in Greek tragedy. Kings and princesses and is this not what he did in a dulcie. Great and noble passions heroic battles and a celebration of Italian glory he’s from a period when Italy was a land of the strong.

Is this not what so many historical novelists now more or less forgotten had done in his day or before him. Writers like the artisan that sell you. The fiery and lateral and guerra etsy. The unreadable can too. But what does manzoni do instead.

He chooses the seventeenth century a period of servitude and lowly characters and the only swordsman as a scoundrel. And only tells of no battles and there’s way history down with documents and proclamations. And people like him everyone likes him learned and ignorant old and young devout and anti clerical.

Because he sensed that the readers of his day had to have that even if they did not know it. Even if they did not ask for it. Even if they did not believe it was fit for consumption. And how hard he had to work with hammer and saw and plane and dictionary

To make his product palatable. To force empirical readers to become the model reader he yearned for. Men’s only did not write to please the public as it was but to create a public who could not help liking his novel and woe to them if they had not liked it.

With supreme hypocrisy and Serenity he referred to his twenty five readers. It was twenty five million he wanted. What model reader did i want as i was writing. An accomplice to be sure one who would play my game. I wanted to become completely medieval and live

In the middle ages as if it were my own period and vice versa. But at the same time with all my might i wanted to create a type of reader who wants the initiation was passed would become my prey or rather the prey of the text

And would think he wanted nothing but what the text was offering him. A text is meant to be an experience of transformation for it’s reader. You believe you want sex and a criminal plot where the guilty party is discovered at the end and all with plenty of action.

But at the same time you. Seemed to accept old fashioned rubbish made up of the living dead nightmare abbeys and black penitents. All right then i will give you Latin. Practically no women. Lots of theology. Gallons of blood and grand guignol style to make you say

But all this is false i refuse to accept it. And at this point you will have to be mine and feel the thrill of god’s infinite omnipotence which makes the world’s order vain. And then if you are good you will realize how i lured you into this trap because

I was really telling you about it at every step. I was carefully warning you that i was dragging you to your damnation. But the fine thing about pacts with the devil. Is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions. Otherwise. Why should you be recompensed with hell.

And since i wanted you to feel as pleasurable the one thing that frightens us. Namely the metaphysical shudder. I had only to choose from among the model plots the most metaphysical and philosophical. The detective novel. The detective metaphysics. It is no accident that the book starts out as a mystery

And continues to deceive the ingenuous reader until the end so the ingenuous reader may not even realize that this is a mystery in which very little is discovered and the detective is defeated. I believe people like thrillers not because there are corpses or because there is a final celebratory triumph of order.

Intellectual social legal and moral over the disorder of evil. The fact is that the crime novel represents a kind of conjecture pure and simple. But medical diagnosis scientific research metaphysical inquiry are also examples of conjecture. After all the fundamental question of philosophy like that of psychoanalysis.

Is the same as the question of the detective novel. Who is guilty. To know this to think you notice you have to conjecture that all the events have a logic. The logic that the guilty party has imposed on them. Every story of investigation and of conjecture

Tells us something that we have always been close to knowing. Sudo hi to Gary and reference. At this point it is clear why my basic story who done it ramify into so many other stories all stories of other conjectures all linked with the structure of conjecture as such.

An abstract model of conjecture reality is the labyrinth but there are three kinds of labyrinth. One is the Greek the labyrinth of theseus. This kind does not allow any one to get lost you go in arrive at the center and then from the center you reach the exit.

This is why in the center there is the minotaur. If he were not there the story would have no zest it would be a mere stroll. Terror is born if it is born. From the fact that you do not know where you will arrive or what the minotaur will do.

But if you unravel the classical labyrinth you find a thread in your hand. The thread of ariadne. The classical labyrinth. Is the ariadne thread of itself. Then there is the mannerist maze if you unravel it you find in your hands a kind of tree a structure with roots with many blind alleys

There is only one exit but you can get it wrong. You need and ariadne thread to keep from getting lost. This labyrinth is a model of the trial and error process. And finally there is the net or rather what deleuze and guattari called rhizome.

The rhizome is so constructed that every path can be connected with every other one. It has no center no periphery no exit. Because it is potentially infinite. The space of conjecture is a rhizome space. The labyrinth of my library is still a mannerist labyrinth

But the world in which William realizes he is living already has a rhizome structure. That is it can be structured but is never structured definitively. A seventeen year old boy told me he understood nothing of the theological arguments but they acted as extensions of the spatial labyrinth.

As if they were the suspense music in a Hitchcock film. I believe that something like this happened. Even the ingenuous reader sense that he was dealing with the story of labyrinths and not only of spatial labyrinth it’s. We could say that strangely the most ingenuous readings were the most structural.

The ingenuous reader entered into direct contact. Beyond any mediation of content with the fact that it is impossible for there to be a story. Enjoyment. I wanted the reader to enjoy himself at least as much as i was enjoying myself.

This is a very important point which seems to conflict with the more thoughtful ideas we believe we have about the novel. The reader was to be diverted but not diverted distracted from problems. Robinson crusoe is meant to divert its own model reader telling him about the calculations in the daily actions

Of a sensible homo economic as much like himself. But Robinson’s son blah blah after he has enjoyed reading about himself in the novel should somehow have understood something more become another person. In abusing himself somehow he has learned. The reader should learn something either about the world or about language.

This difference distinguishes various narrative poetics but the point remains the same. The ideal reader of Finnegan’s wake must finally enjoy himself as much as the reader of Earl Stanley gardner there are different means of amusing and being amused for every season in the history of the novel. Unquestionably

The modern novel has sought to diminish amusement resulting from the plot. In order to enhance other kinds of amusement. As a great admirer one of Aristotle’s poetics. I have always thought that no matter what the novel must also especially amused through it’s plot.

There is no question that if a novel is amusing it wins the approval of a public. Now for a certain period it was thought that disapproval was a bad sign. If a novel was popular this was because it said nothing new and gave the public only what the public was already expecting.

I believe however that to say. If a novel gives the reader what he was expecting it becomes popular. Is different from saying if a novel is popular this is because it gives the reader what he was expecting of it. The second statement is not always true.

It is enough to recall defoe and balzac or more recently the tin drum and one hundred years of solitude. It can be said that the popularity equals lack of value equation was supported by the polemical attitudes of some writers including me. Who formed the gruppo sixty three in Italy.

And even before nineteen sixty three the successful book was identified with the escape novel and the escape novel with the plot novel. While expert fremantle works novels that caused scandal and were rejected by the mass audience were praised. These things were said and there was a reason for saying them.

These were the statements that most shocked respectable readers and reporters have never forgotten them and rightly because these things were said precisely to achieve such an effect. We were talking about traditional novels with a fundamentally escapist structure with no interesting innovations with respect to the the problems discussed in nineteenth century novels.

And inevitably factions were formed and good and bad were often lumped together sometimes for reasons of factional dispute. I remember that the enemies than lampedusa. Barzani and casilla. Today personally i would make subtle distinctions among the three. Lumpy i had written a good anachronistic novel

And our dispute was with those who hailed it as the opening of a new path for Italian literature. Whereas it was on the contrary the glorious conclusion of an old path. My opinion of casilla has remained unchanged. With bersani on the other hand. I would now be far more cautious yes

And if we were back in nineteen sixty three i would greet him as a fellow traveler. But the problem i want to discuss is something else. Nobody remembers what happened in nineteen sixty five when the group i met a second time in palermo to discuss the experimental novel.

And yet the proceedings are still in print entitled you’ll romans will spare him entirely. Published by feltrinelli with the date nineteen sixty five on the cover and nineteen sixty six in the colophon. Now in the course of that debate many interesting things emerged. First of all in his opening paper renato but really.

Theoretician of all the experimentalism of the nouveau Roman. Had to come to grips with rogue greer with grass with pension it must not be forgotten that though pension is now considered one of the inventors of post modernism. The term did not exist then not in Italy anyway

And John barth was just getting started in america. But really mentioned the rediscovered roussel who loved verne but he did not mention bore haste because his rediscovery was yet to come. And what did verrilli say. That till then the abolition of plots and action had been encouraged.

In favor of the pure epiphany in it’s extreme form of. Materialistic ecstasy. We might say i will show you the heavens in a handful of dust as in the paintings of pollock or dubuffet or for tree a. But now a new phase of narrative was beginning. Action was being sanctioned again.

Even though it was an ultra action. I was analyzing the impression we had got the previous evening watching a curious collage movie by barrichello and grief he called. Very fickle in charter. A story composed of fragments of stories or rather of standard situations to boy from commercial cinema.

And i pointed out that the places where the spectators had reacted with the greatest pleasure were those where until a few years ago they would have reacted with shock and outrage. Namely where the logical and temporal consequences of traditional action were omitted and the public’s expectations might have seemed violently frustrated.

If god was becoming traditional. What had been dissonance a few years before was turning into a bomb for the ears or for the eyes. And from this observation only one conclusion could be drawn. Unacceptability of the message was no longer the prime criterion for an experimental fiction. Or any other art.

Since unacceptability had now been codified as entertaining. And i remarked that. Whereas at the time of the futurists programs it had been indispensable for the audience to boo. Sterile today and foolish as the polemic of those who consider an experiment a failure because of the fact that it is accepted as normal.

This means going backward to the worn out utopia of the early avant garde. We insist that the unacceptability of the message on the part of the recipient was a guarantee of value only in a specific historic moment. I suspect that we will perhaps have to give up that. Area ponce.

Which constantly dominates our discussions whereby any external scandal caused by a work can be considered a guarantee of it’s worth birth. The very dichotomy between order and disorder between a work for popular consumption and a work for provocation. Though it remains valid should perhaps be reexamined from another point of view.

In other words i believe it will be possible to find elements of revolution and contestation in works that apparently lend themselves to facile consumption. And it will also be possum will to realize on the contrary that certain works which seem provocative and still enrage the public. Do not really contest anything.

Just recently i met someone who because he had liked a certain product too much and relegated it to a zone of suspicion. And so on. Nineteen sixty five. That was the time when pop art was beginning. And the traditional distinctions between experimental non figurative art and mass art. Narrative and figurative were vanishing.

This was when puso referring to the Beatles said to me. They are working for us. Not realizing however that he was also working for them. And it took the initiative of Cathy barbarian to show us that the Beatles. Linked with purcell. As was only right

Could also be performed in recital with monteverdi and sati. Post modernism irony the enjoyable. Between nineteen sixty five and today two ideas have been definitively clarified. That plot could be found also in the form of quotation of other plots and that the quotation could be less escapist than the plot quoted.

In nineteen seventy two i edited the one Monaco bump yanni. Celebrating the return to the plot. Though this return was via an ironic reexamination. Not without admiration of vasan to try and Eugene sue. And admiration with very little irony of some of the great pages of duma.

The real problem at stake then was. Could there be a novel that was not escapist stand nevertheless still enjoyable. This link and the rediscovery not only of plot but also of enjoy ability was to be realized by the American theorists of post modernism. Unfortunately post modern is a term boner to fear.

I have the impression that it is applied today to anything the user of the term happens to like. Further there seems to be an attempt to make it increasingly retroactive. First it was apparently applied to certain writers or artists active in the last twenty years.

Then gradually he had reached the beginning of the century then still further back. And this reverse procedure continues. Soon the post modern category will include homer. Actually i believe that postmodernism is not a trend to be chronologically defined but rather an ideal category or better still. A constable and. A way of operating.

We could say that every period has it’s own post modernism just as every period would have it’s own mannerism and in fact i wonder if post modernism is not the modern name for mannerism as meta historical category. I believe that in every period there are moments of crisis like those described by

Nature in his thoughts out of season in which he wrote about the harm done by historical studies. The past conditions us Harry’s us blackmails us. The historic avant garde but here i would also consider avant garde a meta historical category. Tries to settle scores with the past. Down with moonlight a futurists slogan.

Is a platform typical of every avant garde. You only have to replace moonlight with whatever known as suitable. The avant garde destroys the faces the past. The demoiselles d’avignon is a typical avant garde act. Then the avant garde goes further. Destroys the figure cancels it arrives at the abstract the informal the

White canvas the slashed canvas the charred canvas. In architecture and the visual arts it will be the curtain wall the building as steely pure parallel a papered. Minimal art. In literature the destruction of the flow of discourse the boroughs like collage silence the white page. In music

The passage from a tonality to noise to absolute silence. In this sense the early cage is modern. But the moment comes when the avant garde the modern can go no further because it has produced a meta language that speaks of it’s impossible texts. Conceptual art.

The post modern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past. Since it cannot really be destroyed because it’s destruction leads to silence. Must be revisited. But with irony not innocently. I think of the post modern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated

Woman and knows he cannot say to her i love you madly. Because he knows that she knows and she knows that he knows. That these words have already been written by Barbara cartland. Still there is a solution he can say. As Barbara cartland would put it i love you madly at.

This point having avoided false innocence having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman that he loves her but he loves her in an age of lost innocence. If the woman goes along with this she will have

Received a declaration of love all the same. Neither of the two speakers will feel innocent. Both will have accepted the challenge of the past of the already said which cannot be eliminated. Both will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony. But both will have succeeded once again in speaking of love.

Irony meta linguistic play annunciation squared. Thus with the modern any one who does not understand the game can only reject it but with the post modern. It is possible not to understand the game and yet to take it seriously. Which is after all the quality the risk of irony.

There is always someone who takes ironic discourse seriously. I think that the collages of Picasso one gree and Brock were modern. This is why normal people would not accept them. On the other hand the collages of Max Ernst who pasted together bits of nineteenth century engravings were post modern

They can be read as fantastic story freeze. As the telling of dreams without any awareness that they amount to a discussion of the nature of engraving and perhaps even of collage. If post modern means this it is clear why stern and rabelais were post modern why Boris surely is.

And why in the same artist the modern moment and the post modern moment can coexist or alternate or follow each other closely. Look at Joyce. The portrait is the story of an attempt at the modern. Dubliners even if it comes before is more modern than portrait. Ulysses is on the borderline.

Finnegan’s wake is already post modern. Or at least it initiates the post modern discourse. It demands in order to be understood. Not the negation of the already said but it’s ironic rethinking. On the subject of the post modern nearly everything has been said. From the very beginning.

Namely in essays like the literature of exhaustion by John barth which dates from nineteen sixty seven. Not that i’m entirely in agreement with the grades that the theoreticians of post modernism. Both included give to writers and artists establishing who is post modern and who has not yet made it.

But i am interested in the theorem that the trends theoreticians derived from their premises. My ideal post modernist author neither merely repute yates nor merely imitates either his twentieth century modernist parents or his nineteenth century pre modernist grandparents. He has the first half of our century under his belt

But not on his back. He may not hope to reach and move the devotees of James michener and Irving Wallace. Not to mention the lobotomies mass media illiterate is. But he should hope to reach and delight at least part of the time.

Beyond the circle of what man used to call the early christians. Professional devotees of high art. The ideal post modernist novel will somehow rise above the quarrel between realism and ear realism formalism and content ism. Pure and committed literature. Coterie fiction and junk fiction.

By an analogy would be with good jazz or classical music one finds much on successive listenings or close examination of the score that one didn’t catch first time through. But the first time through should be so ravishing and not just to specialists that one delights in the replay.

This is what barth wrote in nineteen eighty resuming the discussion but this time under the title the literature of replenishment post modernist fiction. Naturally the subject can be discussed further with a greater taste for paradox and this is what Leslie Fiedler does. Idi salmagundi. Number fifty to fifty one

Published a debate between Fiedler and other American authors. Peter obviously is out to provoke. He praises the last of the mohicans adventure stories gothic novels junk scorned by critics that was nevertheless able to create myths and captured the imagination of more than one generation.

He wonders if something like uncle Tom’s cabin will ever appear again a book that can be read with equal passion in the kitchen the living room and the nursery. He includes Shakespeare among those who knew how to amuse along with gone with the wind.

Will know he is too keen a critic to believe these things he simply wanted to break down the barrier that has been erected between art and enjoy ability. He feels that today reaching a vast public and capturing it’s dreams perhaps means acting as the avant guard

And he still leaves us free to say that capturing readers’ dreams does not necessarily mean encouraging escape. It can also mean haunting them. The historical novel. For two years i have refused to answer idle questions on the order of his your novel an open work or not. How should i know

That is your business not mine. Or. With which of your characters do you identify. For god’s sake with whom does neither identify with the adverbs obviously. Of all idle questions the most idle has been the one raised by those who suggested writing about the past as a way of eluding the present.

Is that true they asked me. It is quite likely i answer if manzoni wrote about the seventeenth century that means the nineteenth century did not interest him. Shakespeare rewrote medieval subjects and was not concerned with his own time whereas love story is firmly committed to it’s own time. Yet la chartreuse de palm

Told only of events that had occurred a good twenty five years earlier. It is no use saying that all the problems of modern Europe took the shape in which we still feel them during the middle ages. Communal democracy and the banking economy. National monarchies and urban life

New technologies and rebellions of the poor. The middle ages are our infancy to which we must always return for anime nieces. But there is also the Excalibur style middle ages and so the problem is something else and cannot be skirted. What is writing a historical novel mean.

I believe there are three ways of narrating the past one is romance. The examples range from the breton cycled to tolkien. Also including the gothic novel which is not a novel but a romance. The past as scenery pretext fairy tale construction to allow the imagination to roam freely.

In this sense a romance does not necessarily have to take place in the past. It must only not take place here and now and the here and now must now be mentioned not even his allegory. Much science fiction is pure romance. Romance is the story of an elsewhere.

Then comes the swashbuckling novel the cloak and dagger stories like the work of duma. This kind of novel chooses a real and recognizable past and to make it recognizable the novelist peoples it with characters already found in the encyclopaedia. Richly or mazarin. Making them perform actions that the encyclopedia does not record.

Needing milady consorting with a certain bonus year. But which the encyclopedia does not contradict. Naturally to corroborate the illusion of reality that historical characters will also do what. As historiography concurs they actually did. Besiege la Rochelle have intimate relations with Anne of Austria. Deal with the frond.

In this real picture the imaginary characters are introduced though they display feelings that could also be attributed to characters of other periods. What D’Artagnan does in recovering the queen’s jewels in London he could have done as well in the fifteenth century or the eighteenth. It is not necessary to live in the seventeenth

Century to have the psychology of D’Artagnan. In the historical novel on the other hand it is not necessary for characters recognizable in normal encyclopedias to appear. Take the betrothed. The best known real character is cardinal federico who until manzoni only came along was a name known only to a few people.

The other borromeo st Charles was the famous one. But everything that renzo Lucia or for cristofaro does could be done only in lombardy in the seventeenth century. What the characters do serves to make history what happened more comprehensible.

Events and characters are made up yet they tell us things about the Italy of the period that history books have never told us so clearly. In this sense certainly i wanted to write a historical novel and not because uber tino or Michael had really existed

And had said more or less what they say but because everything the fictitious characters like William say ought to have been said in that period. I do not know how faithful i remained to this purpose. I do not believe i was neglecting it when i disguised quotations from later authors

Such as wittgenstein passing them off as quotations from the period. In those instances i knew very well that it was not my medieval men who were being modern if anything it was the moderns who were thinking medieval easily.

Rather i asked myself if at times i did not endow my fictitious characters with a capacity for putting together from the. DC act a membre of totally medieval thoughts. Some conceptual. Hirko services that in this form the middle ages would not have recognized as their own.

But i believe a historical novel should do this too not only identify in the past the causes of what came later but also traced the process through which those causes began slowly to produce their effects. If a character of mine comparing to medieval ideas produces a third

More modern idea he is doing exactly what culture did and if nobody has ever written what he says someone however confusedly should surely have begun to think it. Perhaps without saying it blocked by countless fears and by shame. In any case there is one matter that is him he used me greatly.

Every now and then a critic or a reader writes to say that some character of mine declares things that are too modern and in every one of these instances and only in these instances i was actually quoting fourteenth century texts. There are other pages in which readers appreciated the exquisite medieval quality whereas

I felt those pages are a legitimately modern. The fact is that every one has his own idea usually corrupt of the middle ages only we monks of the period know the truth but saying it can sometimes lead to the steak. Ending. I found again two years after having written a novel.

A note i made in nineteen fifty three when i was still a student at the university. Horatio and his friend call the count of pi to solve the mystery of the ghost the count of p eccentric and phlegmatic gentlemen.

Opposed to him a young captain of the Danish guards with f b i methods. Normal development of the action following the lines of the tragedy. In the last act the count of pi having gathered the family together explains the mystery the murder terror is Hamlet. Too late Hamlet dies.

Years later i discovered that Chesterton had somewhere suggested an idea of the sort. It seems that the parisian lipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder story situations. And has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader. Moral.

There exist obsessive ideas they are never personal. Books talk among themselves and any true detection should prove that we are the guilty party. This concludes the reading.

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