“Did he really say these things?”
“Of course, this is certain. He wrote them. But unfortunately he did still worse. After he had settled on Bald Mountain, he began sacking the villages in the valley, raiding them to procure provisions—waging outright war, in short, against the nearby towns.”
“Were all opposed to him?”
“We do not know. Perhaps he received support from some; I told you that he had involved himself in the snarled knot of local dissensions. Meanwhile winter had come, the winter of the year 1305, one of the harshest in recent decades, and there was great famine all around. Dolcino sent a third letter to his followers, and many more joined him, but on that hill life had become intolerable, and they otter so hungry that they ate the flesh of horses and other animals, and boiled hay. And many died.”
“But whom were they fighting against now?”
“The Bishop of Vercelli had appealed to Clement the Fifth, and a crusade had been called against the heretics. A plenary indulgence was granted to anyone taking part in it, and Louis of Savoy, the inquisitors of Lombardy, the Archbishop of Milan were prompt to act. Many took up the cross to aid the people of Vercelli and Novara, even from Savoy, Provence, France; and the Bishop of Vercelli was the supreme commander. There were constant clashes between the vanguards of the two armies, but Dolcino’s fortifications were impregnable, and somehow the wicked received help.”
“From whom?”
“From other wicked men, I believe, who were happy to foment this disorder. Toward the end of the year 1305, the heresiarch was forced, however, to abandon Bald Mountain, leaving behind the wounded and ill, and he moved into the territory of Trivero, where he entrenched himself on a mountain that was called Zubello at the time and later was known as Rubello or Rebello, because it had become the fortress of the rebels of the church. In any case, I cannot tell you everything that happened. There were terrible massacres, but in the end the rebels were forced to surrender, Dolcino and his people were captured, and they rightly ended up on the pyre.”
“The beautiful Margaret, too?”
Ubertino looked at me, “So you remembered she was beautiful? She was beautiful, they say, and many local lords tried to make her their bride to save her from the stake. But she would not have it; she died impenitent with her impenitent lover. And let this be a lesson to you: beware of the whore of Babylon, even when she assumes the form of the most exquisite creature.”
“But now tell me., Father: I have learned that the cellarer of the convent, and perhaps also Salvatore, met Dolcino and were with him in some way. ...”
“Be silent! Do not utter rash statements. I found the cellarer in a convent of Minorites. I do not know where Remigio had been before that. I know he was always a good monk, at least from the standpoint of orthodoxy. As for the rest, alas, the flesh is weak. ...”
“What do you mean?”
“These are not things you should know.” He drew me close again, embracing me and pointing to the statue of the Virgin. “You must be introduced to the immaculate love. There is she in whom femininity is sublimated. This is why you may call her beautiful, like the beloved in the Song of Songs. In her,” he said, his face carried away by an inner rapture, like the abbot’s the day before when he spoke of gems and the gold of his vessels, “in her, even the body’s grace is a sign of the beauties of heaven, and this is why the sculptor has portrayed her with all the graces that should adorn a woman.” He pointed to the Virgin’s slender bust, held high and tight by a cross-laced bodice, which the Child’s tiny hands fondled. “You see? As the doctors have said Beautiful also are the breasts, which protrude slightly, only faintly tumescent, and do not swell licentiously, suppressed but not depressed. ... What do you feel before this sweetest of visions?”
I blushed violently, feeling myself stirred as if by an inner fire. Ubertino must have realized it, or perhaps he glimpsed my flushed cheeks, for he promptly added, “But you must learn to distinguish the fire of supernatural love from the raving of the senses. It is difficult even for the saints.”
“But how can the good love be recognized?” I asked, trembling.
“What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss. And I believe that without Margaret’s seductions Dolcino would not have damned himself, and without the reckless and promiscuous life on Bald Mountain, fewer would have felt the lure of his rebellion. Mind you, I do not say these things to you only about evil love, which of course all must shun as a thing of the Devil; I say this also, and with great fear, of the good love between God and man, between man and his neighbor. It often happens that two or three people, men or women, love one another quite cordially and harbor reciprocal, special fondness, and desire to live always close, and what one party wishes, the other desires. And I confess that I felt something of the kind for most virtuous women, like Angela and Clare. Well, that, too, is blameworthy, even though it is spiritual and conceived in God’s name. ... Because even the love felt by the soul, if it is not forearmed, if it is felt warmly, then falls, or proceeds in disorder. Oh, love has various properties: first the soul grows tender, then it sickens ... but then it feels the true warmth of divine love and cries out and moans and becomes as stone flung in the forge to melt into lime, and it crackles, licked by the flame. …”
“And this is good love?”
Ubertino stroked my head, and as I looked at him, I saw his eyes melt with tears. “Yes, this, finally, is good love.” He took his hand from my shoulder. But how difficult it is,” he added, “how difficult it is to distinguish it from the other. And sometimes when devils tempt your soul you feel like the man hanged by the neck who, with his hands tied behind him and his eyes blindfolded, remains hanging on the gallows and yet lives, with no help, no support, no remedy, swinging in the empty air. ...”
His face was bathed not only with tears but also by a faint perspiration. “Go now,” he said to me quickly. “I have told you what you wanted to know, On this side the choir of angels; on that, the gaping maw of hell. Go, and the Lord be praised.” He prostrated himself again before the Virgin, and I heard him sobbing softly. He was praying.
I did not leave the church. The talk with Ubertino had kindled in my spirit, and in my viscera, a strange fire and an unspeakable restlessness. Perhaps for this reason, I felt inclined to disobedience and decided to return to the library alone. I myself didn’t know what I was looking for. I wanted to explore an unknown place on my own; I was fascinated by the idea of being able to orient myself there without my master’s help. I climbed the stairs as Dolcino had climbed up Monte Rubello.
I had the lamp with me (why had I brought it—was I perhaps already harboring this secret plan?) and I entered the ossarium almost with my eyes closed. In no time I was in the scriptorium. It was a fatal evening, I believe, because as I was wandering among the desks, I glimpsed one on which lay an open manuscript that a monk had been copying: Historia fratris Dulcini Heresiarche. I believe it was the desk of Peter of Sant’Albano, who I had been told was writing a monumental history of heresy (after what happened in the abbey, he naturally gave up writing it—but we must not get ahead of the story). So it was therefore normal that the text should be there, and with it others on kindred subjects, on the Patarines and the flagellants. But I took this circumstance as a supernatural sign, whether celestial or diabolical I still cannot say, and I bent eagerly to read the writing. It was not very long, and I found there also what Ubertino had not told me, obviously recounted by one who had seen all and whose imagination was still inflamed by it.
I learned then how, in March of 1307, on Holy Saturday, Dolcino, Margaret, and Longinus, captured at last, were taken into the city of Biella and handed over to the bishop, who was awaiting the decision of the
Pope. The Pope, hearing the news, transmitted it to King Philip of France, writing: “We have received most welcome news, rich in joy and exultation, for that pestiferous demon, son of Belial, the most horrendous heresiarch Dolcino, after many dangers, long efforts, massacres, and frequent battles, is finally incarcerated with his followers in our prisons, thanks to our venerated brother Ranier, Bishop of Vercelli, captured on the day of the Lord’s holy supper; and numerous people who were with him, infected by the contagion, were killed that same day.” The Pope was merciless toward the prisoners and ordered the bishop to put them to death. Then, in July of that same year, the first day of the month, the heretics were handed over to the secular arm. As the bells of the city rang joyously, the heretics were placed in a wagon, surrounded by the executioners, followed by the militia, and carried through the entire city, and at every corner, men with red-hot pincers tore the flesh of the guilty. Margaret was burned first, before Dolcino, who did not move a muscle of his face, just as he had not uttered a moan when the pincers bit into his limbs. Then the wagon continued on its way, while the executioners thrust their irons into pots filled with glowing coals. Dolcino underwent other torments and remained silent, though when they amputated his nose he shrugged a bit, and when they tore off his male member he emitted a long sigh, like a groan. The last things he said sounded impertinent, for he warned that he would rise on the third day. Then he was burned and his ashes were scattered in the wind.
I folded the manuscript with trembling hands. Dolcino had committed many crimes, I had been told, but he had been horribly burned to death. And at the stake he had behaved ... how? With the steadfastness of martyrs or with the arrogance of the damned? As I staggered up the steps to the library, I realized why I was so upset. I suddenly recalled a scene I had witnessed not many months before, shortly after my arrival in Tuscany. I wondered, indeed, why I had almost forgotten it till then, as if my sick soul had wanted to erase a memory that weighed on me like a nightmare. Or, rather, I had not forgotten it, because every time I heard the Fraticelli discussed, I saw again the scenes of that event, but I immediately thrust them down into the recesses of my spirit, as if witnessing that horror had been a sin.
I had first heard talk of the Fraticelli in the days when, in Florence, I had seen one burned at the stake. It was shortly before I met Brother William in Pisa. He had delayed his arrival in that city, and my father had given me leave to visit Florence, whose churches I had heard praised as most beautiful. I wandered about Tuscany, to learn better the vulgar Italian tongue, and I finally stayed a week in Florence, because I had heard much talk of that city and wished to know it.
And so it was that when I had barely arrived I learned of a great trial that was stirring up the whole city. A heretic Fraticello, accused of crimes against religion and haled before the bishop and other ecclesiastics, was being subjected to severe inquisition at the time. And, following those who told me about it, I went to the place where the trial was taking place, for I heard the people say that this friar, Michael by name, was truly a very pious man who had preached penance and poverty, repeating the words of Saint Francis, and had been brought before the judges because of the spitefulness of certain women who, pretending to confess themselves to him, had then attributed heretical notions to him; and he had indeed been seized by the bishop’s men in the house of those same women, a fact that amazed me, because a man of the church should never go to administer the sacraments in such unsuitable places; but this seemed to be a weakness of the Fraticelli, this failure to take propriety into due consideration, and perhaps there was some truth in the popular belief that held them to be not only heretics but also of dubious behavior (as it was always said of the Catharists that they were Bulgars and sodomites).
I came to the Church of San Salvatore, where the inquisition was in progress, but I could not enter, because of the great crowd outside it. However, some had hoisted themselves to the bars of the windows and, clinging there, could see and hear what was going on, and they reported it to those below. The inquisitors were reading to Brother Michael the confession he had made the day before, in which he said that Christ and his apostles “held nothing individually or in common as property,” but Michael protested that the notary had now added “many false consequences” and he shouted (this I heard from outside), “You will have to defend yourselves on the day of judgment!” But the inquisitors read the confession as they had drawn it up, and at the end they asked him whether he wanted humbly to follow the opinions of the church and all the people of the city. And I heard Michael shouting in a loud voice that he wanted to follow what he believed, namely that he “wanted to keep Christ poor and crucified, and Pope John XXII was a heretic because he said the opposite.” A great debate ensued, in which the inquisitors, many of them Franciscans, sought to make him understand that the Scriptures had not said what he was saying, and he accused them of denying the very Rule of their order, and they assailed him, asking him whether he thought he understood Scripture better than they, who were masters. And Fra Michael, very stubborn indeed, contested them, so that they began provoking him with such assertions as “Then we want you to consider Christ a property owner and Pope John a Catholic and holy man.” And Michael, never faltering, said, “No, a heretic.” And they said they had never seen anyone so tenacious in his own wickedness. But among the crowd outside the building I heard many compare him to Christ before the Pharisees, and I realized that among the people many believed in the holiness of the friar Michael.
Finally the bishop’s men took him back to prison in irons. And that evening I was told that many monks, friends of the bishop, had gone to insult him and enjoin him to retract, but he answered like a man sure of his own truth. And he repeated to each of them that Christ was poor and that Saint Francis and Saint Dominic had said so as well, and that if for professing this upright opinion he had to be condemned to the stake, so much the better, because in a short time he would be able to see what the Scriptures describe, the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse and Jesus Christ and Saint Francis and the glorious martyrs. And I was told that he said, “If we read with such fervor the doctrine of certain sainted abbots, how much greater should be our fervor and our joy in desiring to be in their midst?” And after words of this sort, the inquisitors left the prison with grim faces, crying out in indignation (and I heard them), “He has a devil in him!”
The next day we learned that the sentence had been pronounced; I went to the bishop’s palace, where I could see the parchment, and I copied a part of it onto my tablet.
It began “In nomine Domini amen. Hec est quedam condemnatio corporalis et sententia condemnationis corporalis lata, data et in hiis scriptis sententialiter pronumptiata et promulgata. …” etc., and it went on with a stern description of the sins and crimes of the said Michael; among these one seemed to me most foul, even if I do not know (considering the conduct of the trial) whether he really affirmed this, but it was said, in short, that the afore-mentioned Minorite had proclaimed that Saint Thomas Aquinas was not a saint nor did he enjoy eternal salvation, but was, on the contrary, damned and in a state of perdition! And the sentence concluded, establishing the punishment, since the accused would not mend his ways:
Idcirco, dictum Johannem vocatum fratrem Micchaelem hereticum et scismaticum quod ducatur ad locum iustitie consuetum, et ibidem igne et flammis igneis accensis concremetur et comburatur, ita quod penitus moriatur et anima a corpore separetur.
And after the sentence had been made public, more men of the church came to the prison and warned Michael of what would happen, and I heard them say then, “Brother Michael, the miters and copes have already been made, and painted on them are Fraticelli accompanied by devils.” To frighten him and force him finally to retract. But Brother Michael knelt down and said, “I believe that beside the pyre there will be our father Francis, and I further believe there will be Jesus and the apostles, and the glorious martyrs Bartholomew and Anthony.” Which was a way of refusing for the last time the
inquisitors’ offers.
The next morning I, too, was on the bridge before the bishop’s palace, where the inquisitors had gathered; Brother Michael, still in irons, was brought to face them. One of his faithful followers knelt before him to receive his benediction, and this follower was seized by the men-at-arms and taken at once to prison. Afterward, the inquisitors again read the sentence to the condemned man and asked him once more whether he wished to repent. At every point where the sentence said he was a heretic Michael replied, “I am no heretic; a sinner, yes, but Catholic,” and when the text named “the most venerable and holy Pope John XXII” Michael answered, “No, a heretic.” Then the bishop ordered Michael to come and kneel before him, and Michael said no one should kneel before heretics. They forced him to his knees and he murmured, “God will pardon me.” And after he had been led out in all his priestly vestments, a ritual began, and one by one his vestments were stripped away until he remained in that little garment that the Florentines call a “cioppa.” And as is the custom when a priest is defrocked, they seared the pads of his fingers with a hot iron and they shaved his head. Then he was handed over to the captain and his men, who treated him very harshly and put him in irons, to take him back to prison, as he said to the crowd, “Per Dominum moriemur.” He was to be burned, as I found out, only the next day. And on this day they also went to ask him whether he wished to confess himself and receive communion. And he refused, saying it was a sin to accept the sacraments from one in a state of sin. Here, I believe, he was wrong, and he showed he had been corrupted by the heresy of the Patarines.
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