The Cellars of Notre Dame

by Barbara Frale

  “Eminent father, it is not easy to guess at what it is which worries your sovereign so. When he so desires, an army of ten thousand knights which would be capable of frightening even the Sultan of Cairo moves at his command. He is the greatest monarch in the Christian world. What can he be afraid of?”

  “Of being the greatest monarch in the Christian world,” Lemoine answered seraphically. “And that, young man, depends upon a prophecy.”

  Crescenzio looked at him in puzzlement.

  “Come along, reverend father! You know better than I that prophets speak in fantasies, smoky images. Their predictions can mean everything and nothing. If we listened to every prophet…”

  “The prophecy that alarms Philip IV is actually attributed to his grandfather,” the cardinal interrupted. “According to some, Saint Louis said that the dynasty would end with his son Philip III.”

  “So now the king of France fears that a conspiracy could eliminate him as well as his son, the heir to the throne?”

  “Politically, at least,” replied Lemoine. “The conspiracy is an evil hydra with a hundred heads. Cut one off and two more emerge. Our sovereign’s father also suffered a conspiracy which was hatched, I seem to remember, by someone called Pier de la Brice.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I have no idea!” This habit the cardinal had of speaking in riddles was somewhat hateful, but Crescenzio understood that a good diplomat must necessarily speak with a forked tongue. If he knew, he didn’t want to say; but perhaps he could prove equally useful in any case.

  “Please, tell me: from whom can I get the essential information I need? No one here in Rome, I imagine.”

  “Obviously not,” replied Lemoine. “As far as I am aware, there are only two people who know the truth. One is Marie of Brabant, the widow of Philip III. The other is Regio Colonna, the famous Augustinian theologian known as Giles of Rome who teaches at the Sorbonne; in his time, he was the tutor of King Philip IV. Unfortunately, I have no relationship with either of them. But perhaps you do.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Crescenzio.

  Lemoine gave him a vaguely perverse smile that revealed his shiny teeth. “They say you know a person of the Colonna family rather well, my boy. And this person is undoubtedly related to Father Regio. If that person were to write to him asking for his help, perhaps he would choose to answer. But the letter would have to be dispatched from here, from the Curia. Even though they have remained in Rome despite the exile imposed upon her family, this person certainly has no way of communicating with the outside world.”

  Crescenzio gave Lemoine a skeptical look. “Forgive me, most reverend father, I don’t understand to what you are referring.”

  “Ah, really? And yet it is said that you have a sentimental attachment to the daughter of Ottone Colonna. I think she is called Immacolata, is she not?”

  “That’s just gossip,” muttered Crescenzio guiltily, looking down at the ground.

  “Of course it is, my son. Those famous rumours that the Vatican does not confirm – and which generally contain more truth than the words of any oracle. Perhaps this girl does not exist, or maybe she does and you have nothing to do with her. What a pity! Egidio Colonna’s help would have been decisive,” remarked the cardinal, his eyes boring into Crescenzio’s conscience.

  Crescenzio blushed and bit his lip. He said nothing: he was atrociously torn. Like the seasoned old fox of Vatican diplomacy he was, Cardinal Lemoine knew all too well when it was the opportune moment to go in for the kill and when instead all it took to make a precarious tower come crashing down was a nudge as gentle as that of a child playing marbles.

  “My son, let us leave things thus: if this person exists, and if she wants to write to Father Egidio, you will send me the letter. I will arrange for it to arrive in Paris without anybody knowing of its existence by using my secret diplomatic courier. The same will hold for the answer. And if instead the girl is only a beautiful mirage created by the perverse imagination of the clerics of the curia, then, well…”

  Crescenzio nodded. “Good morning, very reverend father.”

  “Good morning to you too, my son. And thank you.”

  “Thank you for what? For the fact that I’m looking into your sovereign’s problems?”

  “No,” replied Lemoine quietly, “for the agonies you cause your uncle by chasing after his enemy’s daughter!”

  *

  “Very nice, Dante. So in your opinion, the Holy Trinity has the shape of a circle?”

  “Of three circles, to be precise. Of three different sizes and colours.”

  “And what of God, then?”

  “A point without dimensions or substance. Simple and indivisible, from which all Creation radiates.”

  “But when you imagine ascending to the highest heaven, you look into the Holy Trinity and see yourself. Does that not seem somewhat heretical?”

  “To be precise, I see man. The image of the Son as God incarnate. These are just impromptu notes, for the moment. One day I will compile them into a completed whole; and it wouldn’t hurt if I improved my theological knowledge by attending the Sorbonne.”

  Guccio de’ Medici smiled and handed Dante back the sheet upon which his verses were written. He might be a consummate merchant who ran a bit of a sideline in politics, not theology, but he continued to see in that poem that Alighieri intended to write something bold and even provocative. And in any case, meeting like this in the aisles of Santa Marie Maggiore to discuss burdensome things, it was prudent to spend a few minutes on doctrinal questions, so as not to attract too much attention.

  The Medici, a wealthy merchant family, had for some time been given the coveted privilege of being registered among the – the merchants who followed the Pope in his movements and supplied him with the necessary commodities. Not that Boniface VIII moved much lately; apart from when he went to spend his summer holidays in the cool air of Anagni, he resided mainly in Rome, a city which had been his enemy at the time of the feud with the Colonna family, but which had now returned its loyalties to him. Guccio took advantage of this new residential habit of the Curia to commute between Italy and Lyon, where it was possible to buy cloth of a certain value at competitive prices. But Guccio de’ Medici was also a master in the art of governing, always remaining behind the scenes; therefore the Signoria preferred to use him whenever a particularly thorny case reared its head.

  And it was on the secret assignment of the Signoria that he had come to Rome, nominally upon one of his innumerable commercial peregrinations; in reality the principal purpose was to hear the report of Alighieri, who for weeks now had been assiduously attending the relatives of His Holiness. There was no better place to receive first-hand information.

  They found a discreet corner, empty of pilgrims because on the floor there lay a poor insane beggar who had flooded the flags with urine; judging by the stench, this was not his only incontinence.

  Hidden in the shadow of a pillar, the elderly merchant furrowed his white eyebrows.

  “What you tell me gives us some relief, Dante,” he added. “The document that we asked you to look for in the Apostolic Chancellery cannot be found. Which means that perhaps it was never written, so the fears of the Signoria are groundless. Am I right?”

  “You are,” Alighieri confirmed. “The papal notary I spoke to told me something reassuring: even if the document existed somewhere, if indeed our forefathers did sell the freedom of Florence to Charles of Anjou, in any case that pact would have no value. Whatever the Pope ratifies is punctually entered in his registers. And that which is not ratified does not possess the force of law.”

  “There is always the law of the sword, Dante. Valois may decide to take by force what the law does not allow him to have. We know that the prince left his troops in Tuscany to head south. They say he is coming here to Rome, where he is expected by His Holiness.”

  “Will the Pope really grant him the crown of Sicily?”

  “Perhaps. Then we will see
if the Aragonese who now reign in Trinacria will be willing to give it up to obey the Pope! A conflict which could affect the entire Italian peninsula could well break out and Philip IV might come down from France with his army in support of his brother.”

  “I doubt it, Guccio. Philip IV has other fish to fry right now. Private matters, moreover, that cause him great worry.”

  “Private matters?”

  “We do not have a clear of all the facts, Guccio. However, we do know that the Pope is putting up at the Vatican a certain Arnaldo da Villanova, an old Catalan doctor who worked for Philip IV three years ago. It seems that the old man escaped from Paris after being indicted for impiety and sacrilege, but that Boniface VIII acquitted him. The Catalan is an ambiguous type; those of the Curia fear him and accuse him of secretly practicing alchemy. It is said that in Paris he had a hidden laboratory where he worked for the sovereign. Now Philip IV wants him back , and he wants him so desperately that he has gone to the trouble of having the bishop of Pamiers imprisoned to blackmail the pope.”

  “Heavens! What you tell me seems to imply an ominous scenario for His Holiness. The king of France threatens Boniface VIII, everybody knows that; for now his iron fist is covered with a velvet glove, but he lends his ear to those who accuse Pope Caetani of having deceived Celestine V. Do you think he might use that old alchemist to plot a conspiracy against the Pope?”

  Dante shook his head. “I would say that for the moment we cannot rule out any hypothesis. We know that Cardinal Matthew of Acquasparta arrived from Paris and was received by Francesco Caetani, the nephew of His Holiness. I was there too, that evening.”

  Ser Medici’s face grew dark with contempt.

  “Matthew of Acquasparta is a coward,” he said with a sneer. “The Pope had asked him to come to Florence to make peace between the factions that contest our city, but he didn’t want to get his hands dirty so he fled at the first opportunity, and now Florence is in the grip of worse feuds than ever before.”

  “The French troops quartered along the borders represent a constant danger, Guccio. But the disagreements between the Pope and the King of France have positive implications for us. If Boniface VIII and Philip IV are at loggerheads, at least we do not run the risk of them joining forces to our disadvantage. Which is the most serious danger of which we need beware.”

  Guccio de’ Medici seemed perplexed.

  “There is one thing in your story that is not clear to me. You said that this Catalan doctor was in Paris three years ago working for Philip the Fair. But if he was imprisoned for impiety, then he must have run into the Inquisition. I wonder why the king didn’t help him. If this Catalan was so precious to him, he could have given the order to release him, couldn’t he? A request from him would certainly not have been refused.”

  “You’re right, Guccio. The king didn’t lift a finger to get Arnaldo out of jail.”

  “Well, we all know that Philip IV is an enigmatic character. Or so they say. A man plagued with bizarre obsessions. Just think, I went to the Sainte-Chapelle during my last trip to Paris. And what did I see? At the centre of the entrance, a magnificent statue of St. Louis IX in royal robes, all decked out in a blue mantle quilted with gold lilies. And the face looks as much like Philip IV as if it were his reflection in the mirror!”

  “What of it? It is no surprise if he resembles him – they were grandfather and grandson.”

  Guccio de’ Medici chuckled under his moustache. “Ser Dante, it is less funny than it is grotesque. I saw Luigi IX with my own eye when my father took me to Paris as a child . He might have been holy, but he was certainly not handsome!”

  “Are you telling me that Philip IV put his own face on his grandfather’s statue?”

  “If only it were just his face, Ser Dante!”

  Medici explained that for the inhabitants of Paris, it was such an embarrassment that they avoided looking at that statue when they entered the church; they made the sign of the cross in a hurry, with their eyes on the ground, and then rushed past it. To not greet the effigy of the holy king, he who had transported to Paris the Crown of Thorns of Our Lord Jesus Christ, would have seemed a sacrilegious act, but nobody wanted to make the sign of the cross before the effigy of Philip IV . If he had come back to life, Luigi IX would have been shocked to see himself portrayed in that way: tall and handsome, with thick blond hair like spun gold and sapphire eyes. He who had been small, stooped and sickly had suddenly gained the appearance of a Greek god.

  “Philip IV is obsessed with his grandfather,” Guccio continued. “It seems that he even drove the abbot of Saint-Denis half out of his wits because of it. The monarchs of France are all buried in that church, and the current sovereign will go there in due course too. He can choose where, but seems unable to decide. He has had his ancestors’ tombs moved several times, and all because he demands that his tomb be as close as possible to the remains of Louis IX.”

  “Strange indeed,” Dante noted. “I wonder if these manias of the sovereign have any relationship with his ardent desire to have Arnaldo da Villanova with him once again?” Guccio stared up and to the left for a moment, as though pursuing a memory.

  “It may be that the king of France’s attachment to that old man is something to do with filial love,” he added.

  “What?”

  Guccio de’ Medici had no idea that he had said something shocking, but Dante’s expression revealed that the information had caught him completely off guard.

  “You told me earlier that Arnaldo is a Catalan. So was the mother of Philip the Fair. Did you not know?”

  IX

  With the powers of Mercury, engrave upon a marble stone the image of a hand holding a scale, and do it in the hour favourable for Mercury, when the planet is in the ascendant. With this seal, imprint a piece of wax or other suitable material, and give the seal to the sick person: he will soon be freed from all kinds of fevers.

  Arnaldo da Villanova was spasmodically leafing through the pages of the secret book that his ancient master had given him on the day when his long initiatory journey had been completed. He remembered very well that there was at least one other excellent method to counter that disease that leaves no hope of recovery.

  With the powers of the Sun, engrave the following marks upon the stone called sedina. Do it when the Sun is in the ascendant, in the first aspect of the Lion. The one who has worn this amulet upon himself will not suffer from those diseases which are caused by the burning of the Moon.

  Would it really help?

  “I know the Emerald Table,” thought Arnaldo, “men have always known how to counteract any kind of disease by drawing on the infinite energy of Creation – discerning which of the celestial bodies is useful for triggering vigorous regenerative currents in every part of the body.”

  But precisely because he had mastered that knowledge, the old man knew that the strength of those cosmic amulets fought epidemics of a spontaneous nature, those caused by an ominous configuration of the planets or by the burning of the moon.

  “There are no remedies against the plague that those souls seduced by the devil have deliberately spread using the blood of other infected men. Even their breath is irretrievably poisoned!”

  While he was reasoning in this way, Arnaldo saw his finger tremble as it ran along the densely inscribed lines of Kufic characters. His hands had always been so steady, and he couldn’t even blame his advanced age if they were not now: it was anxiety, curse it! The inordinate anxiety that had assailed him after reading the letter which had arrived that morning. Written by someone he knew very well, a man of excellent reputation and therefore above all suspicion. But he said such paradoxical things that it had shaken the absolute clarity of the old man’s views.

  Trying to remain collected, he decided to read it again.

  Renowned master, dear friend,

  I do not know if you will ever receive this letter of mine: they say of you that you live isolated within the Vatican walls, and that no one apart from the
supreme pontiff is admitted to your presence. And yet I pray God to guide my hand as I write to you; I ask him to ensure that this heartfelt prayer of mine reaches you, and that you will want to give me an answer.

  You will remember the hateful circumstance we encountered two years ago: you had been thrown into prison by the Châtelet guards and there were accusations of impiety and sacrilege that I, Master Arnaldo, never believed true, not even for an instant. His Majesty had sent you a jurist from the Royal College, perhaps the best; despite this, you knew that I was in Paris and you turned to me. Surely you were guided in this choice by the friendship that bound us when we were both teaching in Montpellier: I, a modest law professor, you already the finest doctor of the university.

  The trust you showed me in that difficult predicament leads me to believe that you, Master Arnaldo, have a solid respect for me; and it is precisely because of this conviction that I have decided to ignore my hesitations and open my heart in this letter, revealing to you that which tortures me.

  You know that I have never asked you for anything in exchange for the favour I did you at the time. You also know that you owe me your life, as I was the one who advised you not to attempt a defence, as the only way to get out of the show trial they wished to carry out at your expense was to prevent it from taking place. I advised you to appeal to the Pope: the accusation against you, the promulgation of impiety and blasphemy, was a matter of faith, and who better than the Supreme Pontiff to decide in question concerning the religious sphere?

  Thankfully, you listened to me.

  If you now live peacefully and safely in the Vatican, master Arnaldo, if you enjoy the Pope’s esteem, you owe it to my advice: I therefore hope that you will not prove yourself ungrateful enough to deny me your help, especially since I ask nothing for myself but I implore your cooperation to save France and millions of innocent lives.