Leo Africanus (44 page)

The Pope put the palms of both hands on my bowed back, whether as a sign of affection or of taking possession I do not know, before saying a few words of thanks for the pirate's benefit. I was still kneeling, kept thus deliberately by my new master who only permitted me to get up when the Florentine had led my kidnapper outside. For them, the audience was at an end; for me, it was just beginning. In an Arabic strongly tinged with Castilian turns of phrase, the interpreter conveyed to me:

‘A man of art and learning is always welcome among Us, not as a servant but as a protégé. It is true that your arrival in this place has taken place against your will and through means which We cannot approve. But the world is so made that vice is often the arm of virtue, that the best acts are often undertaken for the worst reasons and the worst acts for the best reasons. Thus Our predecessor, Pope Julius, had recourse to a war of conquest in order to endow our Holy Church with a territory where it can feel itself safe. . . .'

He broke off, realizing that he was going to make reference to a debate of whose basic premises I was entirely ignorant. I took advantage of this to venture a timid opinion:

‘In my view, there is nothing scandalous in that. The caliphs, the successors of the Prophet, have always commanded armies and governed states.'

He listened to the translation with unexpected interest. And hastened to question me:

‘Has it always been thus?'

‘Until the moment when the sultans supplanted them. The caliphs have since then been confined to their palaces.'

‘Was that a good thing?'

The Pope seemed to attach great importance to my opinion. I thought very hard before expressing myself.

‘I do not think that it was. As long as the caliphs were rulers, Islam was radiant with culture. Religion reigned peaceably over the affairs of this world. Since then, it is force which rules, and the faith is often nothing but a sword in the hands of the sultan.'

My interlocutor was so satisfied that he called his interpreter to witness:

‘I have always thought that my glorious predecessor was correct.
Without his own army, the pope would only be the chaplain of the most powerful king. One is sometimes forced to make use of the same arms as one's enemies, to go through the same compromises.'

He pointed his index finger towards me.

‘What you say gives Us comfort. Bovadiglia has been very lucky. Are you ready to serve Us?'

I mumbled some words of acquiescence. He acknowledged this, not without a somewhat ironic grimace:

‘Let us accept with resignation the decrees of Providence!'

Before continuing, speaking faster, with the interpreter barely keeping up with him:

‘Our adviser, Master Guicciardini, has spoken briefly about the importance of that which we expect from you. We shall speak about it to you again when the time comes. Know only that you arrive in this blessed city at the most difficult moment in all its history. Rome is threatened with destruction. Tomorrow, when you walk through this city, you will feel that it is growing and becoming more attractive, just as, on the branch of a majestic old tree which has dried up a few buds burst forth, a few green leaves, a few flowers resplendent with light. Everywhere, the best painters, the best sculptors, writers, musicians, artisans, produce the finest works under Our protection. Spring has just begun, but winter already approaches. Death already lies in wait. It lies in wait for us from all quarters. From which side will it reach us? With which sword will it strike us? God alone knows, unless He wishes to take such a bitter cup from Our lips.'

‘God is great!' I said spontaneously.

‘God protect us from all the sultans!' the Pope went further, his expression suddenly joyful.

That day, the interview went no further. Leo X promised to call me again. On returning to my cell, I found that new directives concerning me had been issued: my door would no longer be locked before nightfall, and I could wander as I pleased within the walls of the castle.

When I saw the Pope again a week later he had prepared a serious programme especially for me. Henceforth my time was to be divided between study and teaching. One bishop would teach me Latin, another the catechism, a third the Gospel and the Hebrew tongue; an Armenian priest would give me Turkish lessons every morning. For my part, I had to teach Arabic to seven pupils. For this I would
receive a salary of one ducat each month. Without my having expressed the slightest protest, my benefactor admitted with a laugh that it was a refined form of forced labour, adding however that this programme was proof of his own enthusiastic interest in me. I thanked him and promised to do my best to show myself in no way unworthy.

Henceforth, he would summon me each month, alone or with my teachers to test the state of my knowledge, particularly of the catechism. In his mind the date of my baptism was already fixed, as well as the name which I should bear.

My year's captivity was thus without pain for the body and highly profitable for the mind. From one day to another I felt my knowledge increase, not only in the subjects which I studied but equally from the contact with my teachers, and with my pupils, two Aragonese priests, two Frenchmen, two Venetians, and a German from Saxony. It was the latter who first mentioned in front of me the increasingly bitter quarrel which had set Leo X against the monk Luther, an event which was already threatening to cover the whole of Europe with fire and blood and which was going to bring upon Rome the most heinous of calamities.

926 A.H.
23 December 1519 – 12 December 1520

‘What is the Pope for? What are the cardinals for? What God is worshipped in this city of Rome, entirely given over to its luxuries and pleasures?'

Such were the words of my German pupil Hans, in religion Brother Augustine, who pursued me right into the antechamber of Leo X to win me over to the doctrines of the monk Luther, while I entreated him to keep silent if he did not wish to end his days at the stake.

Blond, bony, brilliant and obstinate, Hans would take a pamphlet or a brochure out of his bag after each lesson, which he would begin to translate and comment upon, pestering me incessantly to know what I thought about it. My reply was invariably the same:

‘Whatever my feelings might be, I cannot betray my protector.'

Hans seemed upset, but not at all discouraged, and would return to the charge after the next lesson.

He realized that I listened to his words without annoyance. To certain of them at least, which sometimes brought back to my memory a
hadith
of the Prophet Muhammad, prayers and blessings upon him! Does Luther not commend the removal of all statues from places of worship, considering that they are objects of idolatry? ‘The angels do not enter into a house where there is a dog or a figurative representation,' the Messenger of God has said in a well-attested
hadith
. Does Luther not say that Christianity is none other than the community of the believers, and ought not to be reduced to a Church hierarchy? Does he not affirm that the Holy
Scripture is the sole foundation of the Faith? Does he not hold up the celibacy of the priesthood to ridicule? Does he not teach that no man can escape from that which his Creator has ordained for him? The Prophet has not said otherwise to the Muslims.

In spite of these similarities, it was impossible for me to follow my own rational inclinations on this subject. A ferocious struggle was taking place between Leo X and Luther, and I could not give my support to someone unknown to me at the expense of the man who had taken me under his wing and had treated me thereafter as if he was my progenitor.

Of course I was not the only one to whom the Pope said ‘My son', but he said it differently to me. He had given me his two first names, John and Leo, as well as the name of his distinguished family, the Medicis, all with pomp and solemnity, on 6 January 1520, a Friday, in the new basilica of St Peter, still unfinished. On that day it was crammed with cardinals, bishops, ambassadors and numerous protégés of Leo X, poets, painters, sculptors, glittering with brocade, pearls and precious stones. Even Raphael of Urbino was there, the divine Raphael as the admirers of his art used to call him, not seeming in any way weakened by the disease which was to carry him off three months later.

The Pope was triumphant beneath his tiara:

‘On this day of Epiphany, when we celebrate the baptism of Christ at the hands of John the Baptist, and when we also celebrate, according to Tradition, the arrival of the three Magi from Arabia to adore Our Lord, what greater happiness could there be for us than to welcome, into the bosom of Our Holy Church, a new Magian King, come from the furthest corners of Barbary to make his offering in the House of Peter!'

Kneeling facing the altar, clad in a long white woollen cloak, I was bemused by the odour of incense and crushed by so many undeserved honours. None of the people assembled in this place was unaware that this ‘Magian King' had been captured on a summer night by a pirate on a beach in Jerba, and brought to Rome as a slave. Everything which was said about me and everything which was happening to me was so insane, so immoderate, so grotesque! Wasn't I the victim of some bad dream, some mirage? Wasn't I really in a mosque in Fez, Cairo or Timbuktu, as on every Friday, my mind affected by a long sleepless night? Suddenly, in the heart of my doubts, the voice of the Pope rose again, addressing me:

‘And you, Our well-beloved son John-Leo, whom Providence has singled out among all men . . .'

John-Leo! Johannes Leo! Never had anyone in my family been called thus! Long after the end of the ceremony I was still turning the letters and syllables over and over in my head and on my tongue, now in Latin, now in Italian. Leo. Leone. It is a curious habit which men have, thus to give themselves the names of the wild beasts which terrify them, rarely those of the animals which are devoted to them. People want to be called wolf, but not dog. Will it happen to me one day that I shall forget Hasan and look at myself in a mirror and say: ‘Leo, you have shadows under your eyes?' To tame my new name I soon arabized it; Johannes Leo became Yuhanna al-Asad. That is the signature which can be seen under the works which I have written at Rome and at Bologna. But regular visitors to the papal court, somewhat surprised by the belated birth of a brown and fuzzy Medici, immediately gave me the additional surname of Africanus, the African, to distinguish me from my saintly adoptive father. Perhaps also to prevent him making me a cardinal as he had done for most of his male cousins, some at the age of fourteen.

On the evening of the baptism, the Pope called me to him. He began by telling me that I was henceforth a free man, but that I could continue to live in the castle while I found lodgings outside, adding that he was anxious that I should continue to pursue my studies and my teaching with the same assiduity. Then he took a tiny book from a table which he placed like a host on my open palm. As I opened it I saw that it was written in Arabic.

‘Read it out loud, my son!'

I did so, leafing through the pages with great care:

‘Book of the prayers of the hours . . . completed on 12 September 1514 . . . in the town of Fano under the auspices of His Holiness Pope Leo –'

My protector interrupted me in a trembling and unsteady voice:

‘This is the first book in the Arabic language which has ever come off a printing press. When you return to your own people, take it carefully with you.'

In his eyes, I saw that he knew that I would go away again one day. He seemed so moved that I could not prevent my own tears from flowing. I bent to kiss his hand. He pressed me to himself and embraced me like a real father. By God, I have loved him since that moment, in spite of the ceremony which he had just inflicted upon
me. That a man of such power, so venerated by Christians in Europe and elsewhere, should be so moved at the sight of a tiny book in Arabic, produced in the workshops of some Jewish printer, seemed to me worthy of the caliphs before the age of decadence, such as al-Ma'mun, the son of Harun al-Rashid, may the Most High bestow His mercy upon the one and the other.

When, on the morrow of this interview, I left the walls of my prison for the first time, free, my arms swinging, when I walked across the bridge of San Angelo towards the Ponte quarter, I had no feelings of resentment or bitterness about my captivity any more. A few weeks of heavy chains, a few months of soft servitude, and lo and behold I had become a traveller again, a migrant creature, as in all the lands where I had sojourned and obtained, for a while, pleasures and honours. What a lot of streets, of monuments, men and women I longed to discover, I who in a year knew of Rome only the cylindrical silhouette of Castel San Angelo and the endless corridor which connected it with the Vatican!