Baudolino

by Umberto Eco

As they were debating these matters, Frederick was again beset with new trials. He now had to resign himself to seeking an agreement with Pope Alexander III. Seeing that the rest of the world did not take very seriously the imperial antipopes, the emperor would agree to pay Alexander homage and acknowledge him as the sole and genuine Roman pontiff—and this was a big step—but in return the pope had to make up his mind to withdraw all support of the Lombard communes—and this was even bigger. Was it worthwhile—both Frederick and Christian asked themselves at this point—while extremely cautious plots were being woven, to provoke the pope with a renewed call for the union of sacerdotium and imperium? These delays made Baudolino champ at the bit, but he could not protest.

  Indeed, Frederick removed him from his plans, sending him on a very delicate mission to Venice, in April of 1177. It was a matter of organizing with great care the various details of the meeting that, in July, would take place between pope and emperor. The reconciliation ceremony should be arranged in every detail and no untoward incident should disturb it.

  "Christian was particularly afraid that your basileus might want to provoke some disturbance, to make the meeting fail. You must know that for some time Manuel Comnenius had been plotting with the pope, and certainly that agreement between Alexander and Frederick would foil his plans."

  "It scotched them forever. For ten years Manuel had been proposing to the pope the reunification of the two churches: he would recognize the religious primacy of the pope and the pope would recognize the basileus of Byzantium as the sole, authentic Roman emperor, of both East and West. But with such a pact Alexander did not gain much power in Constantinople and he wouldn't get Frederick out of his way in Italy and would perhaps alarm the other European sovereigns. So he was choosing the alliance most advantageous for himself."

  "But your basileus sent spies to Venice. They passed themselves off as monks...."

  "Probably they were monks. In our empire the men of the Church work for their basileus, and not against him. But as far as I can understand—and remember, at that time I was not yet at court—they did not send anyone to stir up trouble. Manuel was resigned to the inevitable. Perhaps he wanted only to be informed about what was happening."

  "Master Niketas, surely you know, since you were logothete of countless secrets, that when spies from opposing sides meet on the same field of intrigue, the most natural thing is for them to maintain relations of cordial friendship, each confiding his own secrets to the others. Thus they run no risk of stealing them from one another, and they look very clever to those who have sent them. And so it happened between us and those monks: we immediately told one another why we were there, we to spy on them, and they to spy on us, and afterwards we spent some delightful days together."

  "These are things an astute statesman foresees, but what else should he do? If he questioned the foreign spies directly—and, for that matter, he doesn't know them—they would tell him nothing. So he sends his own spies, with secrets of scant importance to reveal, and comes to know the things he should know, which usually are known already to everyone save himself," Niketas said.

  "Among these monks there was a certain Zosimos of Chalcedon. I was struck by his haggard face, a pair of eyes like carbuncles constantly rolling, illuminating a great black beard, and by his very long hair. When he spoke, he seemed to be talking with a crucified man, bleeding two palms' length from his face."

  "I know the type. Our monasteries are full of them. They die very young, of consumption."

  "Not him. In my whole life I have never seen such a glutton. One evening I even took him to the house of two Venetian courtesans, who, as you probably know, are specially famous among the practitioners of that art as old as the world. By three in the morning I was drunk and I left, but he stayed on and, some time later, one of the girls told me she had never had to deal with such a demon."

  "I know the type. Our monasteries are full of them. They die very young, of consumption."

  Baudolino and Zosimos had become, if not friends, companions in debauchery. Their association began when, after a first and generous drinking bout together, Zosimos uttered a horrible blasphemy and said that he would have given, that night, all the victims of the massacre of the innocents for a maid of indulgent morality. Asked if that was what was taught in the monasteries of Byzantium, Zosimos replied: "As Saint Basil taught, there are two demons that can trouble the intellect, that of fornication and that of blasphemy. But the second operates briefly and the first, if it does not agitate our thought with passion, does not prevent the contemplation of God." They went immediately to demonstrate obedience, without passion, to the demon of fornication, and Baudolino realized that Zosimos had, for every situation in life, a maxim from some theologian or hermit that made him feel at peace with himself.

  On another occasion they were again drinking together, and Zosimos was singing the praises of Constantinople. Baudolino was embarrassed, because he could tell him only about the back streets of Paris, full of the excrement people flung from the windows, or about the sullen waters of the Tanaro, which could hardly compare with the gilded sea of the Propontis. Nor could he tell him of the mirabilia urbis Mediolani, because Frederick had ordered all of them destroyed. He didn't know how to silence his companion. So, to amaze him, he showed him the letter of Prester John, as if to say that somewhere there was an empire that made Zosimos's look like a barren heath.

  Zosimos had barely read the first line when he asked, suspiciously: "Presbyter Johannes? Who is he?"

  "You don't know?"

  "Happy is he who has attained that ignorance beyond which it is not licit to proceed."

  "You may proceed. Read on!"

  He read on, with eyes that became more and more fiery, then he put down the parchment and said, in a detached tone: "Ah yes, Prester John. In my monastery I read many accounts by those who had visited his kingdom."

  "But before reading this, you didn't even know who he was."

  "The cranes form letters in their flight without knowing the art of writing. This letter tells of a Priest named John and it lies, but it speaks of a real kingdom, which in the accounts I have read is that of the Lord of the Indias."

  Baudolino was ready to bet that this rogue was guessing, but Zosimos didn't give him time to doubt sufficiently.

  "The Lord asks three things of the man who is baptized: true faith of his soul, sincerity of his tongue, and continence of his body. This letter of yours cannot have been written by the Lord of the Indias because it contains too many errors. For example, it names many extraordinary creatures of those parts, but says nothing of—let me think—nothing, for example, of the methagallinarii, of the thinsiretae, and of the cametheterni."

  "And what are they?"

  "What are they? Why the first thing that happens to anyone who arrives in the region of Prester John is that he encounters a thinsireta and if he isn't prepared to confront it ... scrunch ... he's devoured in one mouthful. Eh, those are places when you can't just go as if you were going to Jerusalem, where at most you find a camel or two, a crocodile, a pair of elephants, and such. Furthermore, the letter seems suspicious to me because it's very odd it should be addressed to your emperor rather than to our basileus, since the kingdom of this John is closer to the empire of Byzantium than to that of the Latins."

  "You speak as if you knew where it is."

  "I don't know exactly where it is, but I'd know how to go there, because he who knows the destination knows also the way to it."

  "Then why have none of your Romei ever gone?"

  "Who told you no one ever tried to go there? I could say that if the basileus Manuel ventured into the lands of the sultan of Iconium, it was precisely to open the way towards the realm of the Lord of the Indias."

  "You could say it, but you haven't."

  "Because our glorious army was defeated in those very lands, at Myriocephalum, two years ago. And now, before our basileus can mount a new expedition, it will take some time. But if I had great funds
at my disposal, and a band of well-armed men capable of facing a thousand difficulties, with an idea of which direction to take, I would have only to set out. Then, along the way, you inquire, you follow the advice of the natives ... There would be many signs, and once you were on the right road you would begin to see trees that flourish only in those lands and to come upon animals that live only down there, like the methagallinarii, in fact."

  "Three cheers for the methagallinarii," Baudolino said, raising his glass. Zosimos invited him to join in a toast to the kingdom of Prester John. Then he challenged him to drink the health of Manuel, and Baudolino agreed provided Zosimos drink the health of Frederick. Then they drank to the pope, to Venice, to the two courtesans they had met a few evenings before, and in the end Baudolino collapsed first, asleep, with his head on the table, while he could still hear Zosimos's laborious muttering: "This is the monk's life: never act with curiosity, never walk with the unjust, never snatch with your hands...."

  The next morning Baudolino said, his tongue still thick, "Zosimos, you're a rascal. You haven't the slightest idea where your Lord of the Indias is. You want to set out on instinct, and when somebody tells you he saw a methagallinarius over there, you go off in that direction and in no time you come to a palace all of precious stones, you see some character and you say good morning, Father John, how are you? You can tell this sort of thing to your basileus, not to me."

  "But I happen to have a good map," Zosimos said, opening his eyes.

  Baudolino objected that, even with a good map, everything would still remain vague and hard to decide, because everyone knows that maps are not precise, especially for places where, at most, Alexander the Great has been, and no one else after him. And he made a rough sketch of the map drawn by Abdul.

  Zosimos burst out laughing. Of course, if Baudolino followed the most perverse and heretical idea that the earth is a sphere, he couldn't even begin the journey.

  "Either you trust the Holy Scriptures, or else you're a pagan who still thinks the way they thought before Alexander—who, for that matter, was incapable of leaving us any map. The Scriptures say that not only the earth but the whole universe is made in the form of a tabernacle, or, rather, that Moses built his tabernacle as a faithful copy of the universe, from the earth to the firmament."

  "But the ancient philosophers..."

  "The ancient philosophers, not yet enlightened by the word of the Lord, invented the Antipodes, while in the Acts of the Apostles it says that God from one man devised our humankind to inhabit the entire face of the earth, its face—not the other side, which doesn't exist. And Luke's Gospel says that the Lord gave the apostles the power to walk on serpents and scorpions, and to walk means to walk above something, not below. Anyway, if the earth were a sphere and suspended in the vacuum, it would have neither an above nor a below, and so there would be no sense, no direction in the walking. Who thought the heavens were a sphere? The Chaldean sinners from the top of the tower of Babel, insofar as they were able to erect it, misled by the feeling of terror that the looming sky inspired in them! What Pythagoras or what Aristotle has been able to announce the resurrection of the dead? And would ignoramuses of that stripe have understood the shape of the world? Would this world shaped like a sphere have served to predict the rising or setting of the sun, or the day on which Easter falls, whereas most humble people, who have studied neither philosophy nor astronomy, know very well when the sun sets and when it rises, according to the seasons, and in different countries they calculate Easter in the same way, without deceiving themselves? Is it necessary to know a geometry other than the one a good carpenter knows, or an astronomy different from what a peasant observes when he sows and when he reaps? And besides, what ancient philosophers are you talking to me about? Do you Latins know Xenophanes of Colophon, who, while asserting that the world was infinite, denied that it was spherical? The ignoramus can say that, considering the universe like a tabernacle, you can't explain eclipses or equinoxes. Well, in the empire of us Romans, centuries ago there lived a great sage, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who traveled to the very confines of the world, and in his Christian Topography demonstrated in irrefutable fashion that the earth truly is in the form of a tabernacle, and that only thus can we explain the most obscure phenomena. Could you say that the most Christian of kings—John, I mean—would not follow the most Christian of topographies, which is not only that of Cosmas, but also that of the Holy Scriptures?"

  "What I say is that my Prester John knows nothing of the topography of your Cosmas."

  "You told me yourself that the Priest is a Nestorian. Now the Nestorians had a dramatic argument with other heretics, the Monophysites. The Monophysites held that the earth was made like a sphere, the Nestorians like a tabernacle. Cosmas was also known to be a Nestorian, or in any case a follower of Nestor's teacher, Theodore of Mopsuestia, who all his life fought against the Monophysite heresy of John Philoponus of Alexandria, who followed pagan philosophers like Aristotle. Cosmas a Nestorian, Prester John a Nestorian: both cannot but believe firmly in the earth as a tabernacle."

  "Just a moment. Both your Cosmas and my Priest are Nestorians: no argument there. But since, as far as I know, the Nestorians were wrong about Jesus and his mother, they could also be wrong about the shape of the universe, couldn't they?"

  "This is where my finest reasoning comes into play! I want to demonstrate to you that—if you want to find Prester John—you must in any case stick with Cosmas and not the pagan topographers. Let us suppose for a moment that Cosmas wrote things that are false. Even so, these things are thought and believed by all the nations of the Orient that Cosmas visited, otherwise he wouldn't have learned them, in those lands beyond which lies the kingdom of Prester John, and surely the inhabitants of that kingdom itself think that the universe is in the form of a tabernacle, and they measure distances, confines, the course of rivers, the extension of seas, coasts, and gulfs, not to mention mountains, according to the wondrous design of the tabernacle."

  "Once again, it doesn't seem a valid argument to me," Baudolino said. "The fact that they believe they live in a tabernacle doesn't mean they really do live in one."

  "Let me finish my demonstration. If you asked me how to arrive at Chalcedon, where I was born, I could explain it to you easily. Perhaps I measure the days of travel in a way different from you, or perhaps I call right what you call left—in any case I have been told that the Saracens draw maps where the south is above and the north is below, and therefore the sun rises to the left of the lands they depict. But if you accept my way of representing the course of the sun and the shape of the earth, following my directions you would surely arrive at the place where I want to send you, while you would never understand them if you refer to your maps. So..." Zosimos concluded triumphantly, "if you want to reach the land of Prester John you must use the map of the world that Prester John would use and not your own—mind you, even if your map is more correct than his."

  Baudolino was won over by the cogency of the argument and asked Zosimos to explain how Cosmas and, consequently, Prester John saw the universe. "Ah no," Zosimos said. "I know very well where to find the map, but why must I give it to you and to your emperor?"

  "If he were to give you enough gold to set out with a band of well-armed men."

  "Exactly."

  From that moment on, Zosimos didn't allow one word to escape him on the subject of Cosmas's map, or, rather, he hinted at it every now and then, when he reached the peak of intoxication, but tracing vaguely with his finger some mysterious curves in the air, then falling silent, as if he had said too much. Baudolino would pour him more wine and ask him apparently bizarre questions. "But when we are close to India, and our horses are exhausted, will we have to ride elephants?"

  "Perhaps," Zosimos said, "because in India there live all the animals mentioned in your letter, and others besides, except for horses. Still they do have some, because they bring them in from Tzinista."

  "What country is that?"

 
; "A country where travelers go in search of worms for silk."

  "Worms for silk? What does that mean?"

  "It means that in Tzinista there exist some tiny eggs that are placed in women's bosoms and, enlivened by the warmth, they produce little worms. These are set on mulberry leaves, which nourish them. When they are grown they spin silk from their bodies and wrap themselves in it, as in a tomb. Then they turn into marvelous, varicolored butterflies and they break free of the cocoon. Before flying away, the males penetrate the females from behind and both live without food in the warmth of their embrace until they die and the female dies brooding over her eggs."

  "There's no trusting a man who wants to make you believe silk comes from worms," Baudolino said to Niketas. "He was spying for his basileus, but he would have set out in search of the Lord of the Indies even in Frederick's pay. Then, when he got there, we would never see him again. And yet his mention of the map of Cosmas excited me. That map appeared to me like the star of Bethlehem, except that it pointed in the opposite direction. It would tell me how to follow, backwards, the route of the Magi. And so, believing myself more clever than he, I prepared to lead him to excess in his intemperance, to make him duller and more talkative."

  "And instead?"

  "And instead he was more clever than I. The next day I couldn't find him anywhere, and some of his fellows told me he had returned to Constantinople. He left me a farewell message. It said: "As fish die if they remain out of water, so monks who linger outside the cell weaken the vigor of their union with God. These past days I have dried up in sin; let me find again the cool living water."

  "Maybe it was the truth."

  "Not at all. He had found the way to milk gold from his basileus. And to my harm."

  17. Baudolino discovers that Prester John wrote to too many people

  The following July, Frederick arrived in Venice by sea, accompanied from Ravenna to Chioggia by the doge's son, then he reached the church of San Niccolò al Lido, and on Sunday the 24th, in Saint Mark's Square, prostrated himself at the feet of Alexander. The pope raised him and embraced him with a show of affection, and all the witnesses sang the Te Deum. It was truly a triumph, even if it was not clear for which of the two. In any case it ended a war that had lasted eighteen years, and in those same days the emperor signed a six-year truce with the communes of the Lombard League. Frederick was so happy that he decided to stay on in Venice for another month.