City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  “Here’s the ordo lecturarum,” said Dean Bazin, and judging by the venomous look he gave me, despite the fact that we were meeting for the first time, I realized I should not look for any excessive tenderness on his part when I sat for my exams at the end of the year.

  “To great men, great honour,” intoned Dean Bazin, and removing his cap he continued with great pomp. “First, Hippocrates, The Aphorisms…”

  At the name of the venerated master of Greek medicine, the royal professors and ordinary doctors removed their bonnets and did not put them back on until he had finished his reading of Hippocrates.

  “Second: Galen, Libri morborum et symptomatum.”||

  How strange, I thought as I wrote this name (“Galien, with only one ‘l’,” whispered d’Assas, reminding me of the correct French spelling. “Gallien with two is a Roman emperor”), how strange that they remove their hats for Hippocrates but not for Galen. Could it be that, although both were Greeks, the first of whom lived 400 years before Christ, and the second of whom lived two centuries after, Galen is too recent to merit the same respect?

  “Third and fourth,” Bazin continued, “we will study Arab medicine, as our school has always done: Avicenna’s The Canon of Medicine and al-Razi’s Treatise on Smallpox and Measles.”

  Here Dean Bazin paused, as if conscious of the scandal that he was going to provoke. “Fifth: Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica.** Sixth: Ambroise Paré’s The Method of Treating Wounds Made by Arquebuses and Other Firearms.”

  At this point there was such a commotion on the ordinary doctors’ bench that I couldn’t help noticing it, since I was up on the platform. Not that there was a struggle or uproar, but, in a more muffled way, there was a series of consultations and angry whisperings and along the entire bench, a wave of resentment, with, here and there, expressions of great dismay among the doctors—some turning their backs, some turning crimson with anger, others jumping to their feet and actually spitting like tomcats.

  “What’s all this?” said Saporta, frowning deeply.

  “Dean Bazin,” cried one of the ordinary doctors, “I cannot stifle my indignation any longer: Vesalius and Paré are modern doctors and it’s an abomination to put them in our ordo lecturarum beside such venerable masters of the ancient practice of medicine.”

  This doctor had very black, fanatical eyes set in a long, narrow, wrinkled and jaundiced visage, and his bilious vehemence so surprised Dean Bazin that he stood there unable to say a word. But of course, as you may surmise, Chancellor Saporta was not to be undone by such a one.

  “Dr Pennedepié,” he said, with his regal air of disdain, “if you wish to express yourself in this assembly, be so good as to ask my permission so to do.”

  “I so request it,” said Pennedepié, raising his cap of bright-red silk.

  “I so grant it,” replied Saporta, “and in granting it, I request that you use it moderately and wisely.”

  “Very well then,” cried Pennedepié, raising his red bonnet, “I shall repeat here my thoughts on the choices of texts for the fifth and sixth books of our ordo lecturarum. I think these books are a great scandal, and I am not the only one here who thinks so. Vesalius and Paré are modern writers, and what’s worse, they’re our contemporaries! Vesalius died in 1564 and Ambroise Paré is still alive!”

  “And may God grant him long life,” answered d’Assas, with his benign look, suave voice and gestures so caressing you would have thought his chambermaid were standing at his right hand.

  Dean Bazin, having regained his composure, now adopted an entirely different tone as he replied, “Dr Pennedepié, I would like you, from the depths of your ignorance, to try to understand that nothing, absolutely nothing in the Béziers decrees forbids including moderns in our ordo lecturarum.”

  “But we never did this under Rondelet!” said Pennedepié.

  “Dr Rondelet is dead!” cried Saporta in a thunderous voice. “And I find it passing strange that seeing me standing where I’m standing you haven’t yet noticed his demise.”

  Dr Pennedepié, accused of rank ignorance by the dean and so brutally snubbed by the chancellor, was so humiliated that his eyes were popping out of their sockets and his lips were trembling, and he rose as if to leave. Dr Saporta, seeing him stand, and fearing no doubt that Pennedepié’s departure might start an exodus of the other ordinary doctors and gain enough momentum to create a cabal against him, immediately resolved to mix some oil with his vinegar.

  “Being uninformed about the Béziers decrees does not necessarily imply ignorance,” he said in his most soothing voice. “Dr Pennedepié’s disdain for the moderns in no way diminishes the fact that he himself is one of the most learned doctors in Montpellier, and that someday he will take his place among the royal professors.”

  Despite the fact that this empty promise was clearly intended as nothing more than a temporary balm, it had a marvellous effect on Dr Pennedepié, who, seeing the chancellor in an entirely new light, sat back down and dreamily fell silent.

  Immediately, however, another David emerged from the ranks, “Monsieur, may I speak?”

  “You may, Dr Pinarelle,” said Saporta.

  This Pinarelle was a small, bony fellow with a pointed nose, thin lips and ears that stuck straight out from his head and looked, if I may speak of an ordinary doctor with such candour, entirely senile.

  “Monsieur,” he croaked, “it doesn’t seem fitting to include Vesalius in our ordo lecturarum since he dared to insult Galen.”

  “He did not insult him,” corrected d’Assas in a soft voice and with a caressing gesture, “he respectfully criticized him.”

  “But it’s all the same!” cried Pinarelle. “Criticize Galen? One of the masters of Greek medicine! Who is Vesalius to dare such a thing?”

  “If Galen were infallible, he would be God Himself,” replied d’Assas with his most disarming smile. “You must admit that Galen’s methods were very strange: he dissected animals and applied to men, without even checking them, the observations he’d made. So it was that he declared that a woman’s uterus is split in two because that of the rabbit was. Vesalius corrected this error.”

  “I don’t care!” cried Pinarelle furiously. “I’d rather be mistaken with Galen than right with Vesalius!”

  At this the entire assembly, which, up until Pinarelle’s statement, had been noisily commenting on the proceedings, was struck dumb with disbelief and then burst into waves of laughter, which moved from bench to bench uproariously. An angry frown from Saporta put an end to this brouhaha, and, in the silence that followed, Dean Bazin said in his most venomous tone: “Dr Pinarelle, if you were treating the uterus of a sick woman, it would not be of little consequence that you were, as you put it, mistaken with Galen.”

  At this witticism, another huge burst of laughter shook the assembly. Even the apothecary students and the surgical apprentices sniggered at this, despite the fact that, unworthy of seats, they listened to this squabbling while standing at the back of the hall. Pinarelle felt both the viper’s sharp bite penetrating his skin and its hot poison burning in his veins. He fully realized that it would take a long time to recover from this cut Bazin had inflicted, and that, for months to come, it would offer to the entire city of Montpellier an immense source of humorous jibes. He turned ashen to have been so pricked by his dean, and, in his silent resentment, threw Bazin such a hateful look that Chancellor Saporta understood that Pinarelle, like Pennedepié (and even more easily than the latter) could be won over to his devotion. It was clear to me, as I watched open-mouthed and excited, that if Saporta was defending Bazin’s ordo lecturarum, he was in no way defending Bazin’s person. Quite the contrary.

  The unhinged laughter of the assembly would have continued unabated if Saporta, who’d been careful not to take part in it, had not suddenly frowned, rapped his gavel on the table, signalling the beadle to make his switch whistle in accompaniment.

  “No one,” said the chancellor in a grave voice and with a feigned a
ppearance of equity, “no one here may question Dr Pinarelle’s science or his conscience. Monsieur de Joyeuse owes to our colleague here his recovery from a nasty catarrh and would agree with what I’ve just said since he has only praise for Pinarelle. I wanted to make that clear. However, to satisfy Dr Pinarelle’s scruples regarding the late and illustrious Vesalius, I must inform him of something few in this city know, that Vesalius was a student at our school of medicine in Montpellier.”

  “I didn’t know that!” cried Pinarelle. “That changes everything!”

  And even though this joke proved Pinarelle to be even sillier and more naive than the one that had just caused him so much embarrassment, the love that all of us, novices and veterans alike, bore our college, caused this announcement to be met with general applause. And Pinarelle, smiling gratefully at the chancellor, tipped his crimson hat to the assembly and sat down.

  I imagined that after such tempest and tumult that the assembly would finally be becalmed, but scarcely had Pinarelle returned to order than a third champion threw his glove into the arena.

  “May I speak, Monsieur?” said a stentorian voice.

  “You may, Dr de La Vérune,” answered Saporta.

  This fellow, as I learnt later from Fogacer, was named La Verrue, too similar to the word for smallpox to avoid ridicule in the medical community, and so he changed it to La Vérune. But this transformation did not bring him the satisfaction he’d hoped for, so he’d added a noble “de” to it, which raised many an eyebrow before people grew accustomed to it. I was surprised by how voluminous Dr de La Vérune was in every part of his body: cheeks, neck, chest and belly, but unlike Figairasse, who looked so strong, this fellow just looked swollen.

  “All right, we can accept Vesalius,” he cried in the most scornful tone. “He’s a doctor and studied at our school. But Ambroise Paré! Words fail me to tell you how scandalized I am that a book by this surgeon (he pronounced the word with infinite disparagement) should find its way into our ordo lecturarum! How can we tolerate it, Monsieur, that doctors of medicine—I said doctors!—should open Ambroise Paré’s book, which, by the way, is written in French, read it and write commentaries on it? I blush with shame and confusion at the very thought! Is this, I ask you, a reading worthy of our school? Should a doctor, I say a doctor, read a book in French by a surgeon who is merely the holder of a master’s degree and not a doctor? Are we going to allow ourselves to sink down into such mud?”

  In the silence that followed this remonstration, which greatly embarrassed both dean and chancellor since it touched on their rank and the privileges that accompanied it, which are considered by all to be perhaps more sacred even than their science, Dr d’Assas, smiling genteelly and, speaking softly, replied, “If ‘mud’ there be, than I would be happy to be relegated to the rank of master of science if I had the genius of Ambroise Paré. For I hold him to be a very great doctor and a surgeon without peer. On the battlefields, he saved countless amputees by tying the ligature of their arteries, rather than cruelly cauterizing them by fire. And as for his treatise on the wounds made by firearms, he has no equal to this day in the accuracy of his descriptions and in the efficacy of the remedies he has proposed.”

  “Nevertheless,” cried Dr de La Vérune with a sweep of his hand as though he were brushing away d’Assas’s arguments like straw, “Ambroise Paré is not a doctor! He has only a master’s degree! We might admit to have read him in the secrecy of our rooms, though he doesn’t write in Latin. But to read him ex cathedra†† and in French would be unacceptable and beneath us.”

  “Dr de La Vérune,” said Chancellor Saporta, who, as I observed once again, had the ability to change from devouring wolf into lamb, “I want to praise you for the zeal you have displayed in defending the glory of our title against the encroachments of our subalterns: it is true that Ambroise Paré is only a master. He is not a doctor. Worse yet, he’s a surgeon. And for all of these reasons, I share your views and stand wholeheartedly with you. However, the authority of the surgeon in matters of wounds inflicted by firearms is, as Dr d’Assas said, unequalled, and as these wounds are so frequent in these troubled times that we live in, we have thought it wise to instruct our scholars in these arts. Are we mistaken in doing so? Should we strike Ambroise Paré’s book from our ordo lecturarum?”

  “If I were you, yes! I would do it!” cried Dr de La Vérune, who, complete idiot that he was, thought he’d won the day.

  “And yet!” countered the chancellor with a sudden gleam in his eye. “And yet! The case merits reflection. Ambroise Paré cared for Henri II during his long agony. Charles IX has chosen him as his personal physician. So I ask each and every one of you,” he added, raising his voice, “should we take lightly the serious risk of offending our king and sovereign by striking his personal physician’s work from our ordo lecturarum? Let all who so believe raise their right hands.”

  This question, by its tone and by its captious form, was posed in such a menacing way, the entire assembly was so cowed, and their rebellious spirit so completely crushed, that not a soul moved so much as a finger. And profiting from this cowardly and tacit acquiescence, the chancellor, his brow still furrowed in an angry frown, raised his gavel and, as the entire assembly continued to keep as still as a mouse in its hole, he struck the table with brute force, saying in a thunderous voice: “The ordo lecturarum for the year of Our Lord 1566 has been unanimously adopted.”

  One might have thought that we had done with the twists and turns that had marked the beginning of the school year. But this was not to be, either for Chancellor Saporta or for me, however paltry my involvement had been in the larger questions that had just been debated here. I was more troubled than astonished by the spectacle provided by the angry doctors. (For example, if examined by Dr Pinarelle at the end of the year, was I to argue with Galen that the uterus was a double-structured organ, or agree with Vesalius on its unity?) And, as I was lost in these thoughts, I realized that I hadn’t yet written the name of the book by Ambroise Paré in the school register (though I knew the title well enough, having seen it in my father’s library at Mespech) when Saporta, leaning over my shoulder like a great crow, suddenly said in his inevitably brusque and imperious voice, “Well, Siorac, where are we?”

  “Monsieur, I’m just finishing.” And scarcely had I written the last word when the chancellor took—or rather snatched—the pen from my fingers and, in his large handwriting, all of whose letters bristled with pikes and shields, wrote on the bottom right of the document:

  Dr Saporta

  Chancellor

  Then, with an air of superiority and swagger, handing the pen to Dean Bazin (who was gnashing his teeth at being treated so cavalierly), Saporta walked away, his nose in the air, to discuss some matter with Dr d’Assas, who, despite his many human failings (his vineyard and his chambermaid), was still held in great esteem. I remained sitting on my stool in front of the register and saw Dr Bazin, his meagre body trembling with fury, approach the register, pen in hand, like a viper its prey, reflecting for a moment on what he intended to do. Then, his jaundiced face illuminated by the ruse he had settled on, he signed his name (despite his trembling hand) in the space between Saporta’s name and the text of the ordo lecturarum, inserting it thus:

  Dr Bazin

  Dean

  Dr Saporta

  Chancellor

  In this way, despite being constrained to sign second, he demonstrated in the most dazzling fashion that he came first in the hierarchy of administrative functions, the responsibility for the curriculum having, in his eyes, priority over the management of the school.

  “By the belly of St Anthony!” I thought. “Here’s a nasty trick! What cleverness! What a hypocritical tactic! And what frightful carnage we’re going to see in this swamp between these two crocodiles!”

  For my part, however much I was inclined to side with Dean Bazin (since, after all, it was a question of the ordo lecturarum that he’d read and, for the most part, composed), Sa
porta’s (admittedly minuscule) support and the loyalty I owed my doctor-father had me sneak away like a cat who’d just stolen his dinner, slipping in among the black robes to tug on the chancellor’s long sleeve and alert him, sotto voce to the sacrilege that had just been committed.

  “I’m going to find a remedy for that!” mused Saporta, his feathers up and his nostrils whitening in the heat of his anger.

  Saporta returned with great strides to the table of the royal professors, where Dean Bazin was licking his chops, eyes modestly lowered as he tendered the pen to Dr Feynes for him to sign in his turn. Saporta, however, grabbed the book out of his hands and, holding it up to the light, carefully reread what I’d written.

  “Siorac, my son,” he said finally, “you’ve got beautiful handwriting. But unfortunately, you’ve misspelt al-Razi. Since we can’t have the name of the great master of Arab medicine disfigured in this manner, you must”—and here he ripped the page from the book and tore it to shreds—“do it over.”

  At this, Merdanson and his acolytes burst out laughing and began shouting and razzing, “Pierre al-Razi de Siorac!”—so much that Saporta again had to rap his gavel three times on the desk and Figairasse had to whistle his switch through the air with particular vigour before the rascals would calm down.

  Quite understandably ashamed for having publicly to take the fall for this dark disputation between our regents, I recopied the ordo lecturarum from one end to the other on a new page of the school register. This done, Saporta, seizing the pen, signed his name on the lower right-hand side of the text, but close up against my own script so there was absolutely no space in which Bazin might insert his own name. Next, fearing that the dean might try to sign the document on the left side level with his own name, Saporta made a series of hash marks on that entire side which barred any access to the area. Thus Bazin was forced to sign not only after his chancellor, but directly below the signature of Saporta, who, on this first day of the new school year, carried the day against his dean and established his complete domination of the college.