The Name of the Rose (50 page)

“I can't,” Severinus said. “I'll explain to you later. I have discovered . . . I believe I have discovered something interesting. . . . You must come, I have to show you the book . . . cautiously. . . .” He broke off. We realized that, silently as was his custom, Jorge had 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 Severinus's 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 to Severinus, “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) Aymaro 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 to Severinus, 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 cellarer leaning against the jamb of the outside door; he had heard William's warnings and was looking from my master to the herbalist, his face tense with fear. He saw Severinus 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 brume. I calculated rapidly what I should do. I had been ordered to follow the blind man, but because it was feared he was going toward the infirmary. Instead, his guide was taking him in another direction: he was crossing the cloister, heading for the church or the Aedificium. The cellarer, on the contrary, was surely following the herbalist, and William was worried about what could happen in the laboratory. So I started following the two men, wondering, among other things, where Aymaro had gone, unless he had come out for reasons quite removed from ours.

I did not lose sight of the cellarer, 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 Severinus too closely. And so when the door of the infirmary appeared in the mist it was closed. Severinus had already gone inside, heaven be thanked. The cellarer turned 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 know now; I did not know it then.

I went back into the chapter hall. That busybody, 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 Alborea praised the faith of the Minorites. Jerome exalted the charity of the preachers, all expressed the hope of a church no longer racked 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 Bertrand del Poggetto was inviting William to expound 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 “eh”s and “oh”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 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 and to 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 the 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, apologized to his listeners, remarking that the atmosphere was certainly very damp, and suggested that the way in which the people could express its 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 law is 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 authorized, or, rather, encouraged, Adam to give things names, and on that score He had allowed His terrestrial subject free rein. In fact, though some in our times say that nomina sunt consequentia rerum, 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, every thing and animal according to its nature, nevertheless he was exercising a kind of sovereign right in imagining the name that in his opinion best corresponded to that nature. Because, in fact, it is now known that men impose different names to designate concepts, though only the concepts, signs of things, are the same for all. So that surely the word “nomen” comes from “nomos,” that is to say “law,” since nomina are given by men ad placitum, in other words by free and collective accord.

The listeners did not dare contest this learned demonstration.

Whereby, William concluded, is it 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, an 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 governments, 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 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 law of 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. He did not 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 prince 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? Condemn 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 lacked the time or the ability to say so in three years of preaching? But it was right that he should 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 everyone 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 infidels, 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 spiritual 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 injuring 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 of his brethren such as Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun, led to the following conclusions: if the Franciscans wanted to remain poor, the Pope could not and should not oppose such a virtuous wish. To be sure, if the hypothesis of Christ's poverty were to be proved, this would not only help the Minorites 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 or for his disciples, this detachment of Jesus from temporal things seemed sufficient evidence to suggest the belief, without sinning, that Jesus, on the contrary, preferred poverty.