Celestine V was succeeded by Boniface VIII, and this Pope promptly demonstrated scant indulgence for Spirituals and Fraticelli in general: in the last years of the dying century he signed a bull, Firma cautela, in which with one stroke he condemned bizochi, vagabond mendicants who roamed about at the far edge of the Franciscan order, and the Spirituals themselves, who had left the life of the order and retired to a hermitage.
After the death of Boniface VIII, the Spirituals tried to obtain from certain of his successors, among them Clement V, permission to leave the order peaceably. I believe they would have succeeded, but the advent of John XXII robbed them of all hope. When he was elected in 1316, he wrote to the King of Sicily telling him to expel those monks from his lands, where many had taken refuge; and John had Angelus Clarenus and the Spirituals of Provence put in chains.
All cannot have proceeded smoothly, and many in the curia resisted. The fact is that Ubertino and Clarenus managed to obtain permission to leave the order, and the former was received by the Benedictines, the latter by the Celestinians. But for those who continued to lead their free life John was merciless, and he had them persecuted by the Inquisition, and many were burned at the stake.
He realized, however, that to destroy the weed of the Fraticelli, who threatened the very foundation of the church’s authority, he would need to condemn the notions on which their faith was based. They claimed that Christ and the apostles had owned no property, individually or in common; and the Pope condemned this idea as heretical. An amazing position, because there is no evident reason why a pope should consider perverse the notion that Christ was poor: but only a year before, a general chapter of the Franciscans in Perugia had sustained this opinion, and in condemning the one, the Pope was condemning also the other. As have I already said, the chapter was a great reverse in his struggle against the Emperor; this is the fact of the matter. So after that, many Fraticelli, who knew nothing of empire or of Perugia, were burned to death.
These thoughts were in my mind as I gazed on the legendary figure of Ubertino. My master introduced me, and the old man stroked my cheek, with a warm, almost burning hand. At the touch of his hand I understood many of the things I had heard about that holy man and others I had read in the pages of his Arbor vitae crucifixae; I understood the mystic fire that had consumed him from his youth, when, though studying in Paris, he had withdrawn from theological speculation and had imagined himself transformed into the penitent Magdalen; and then his intense association with Saint Angela of Foligno, who had initiated him into the riches of the mystic life and the adoration of the cross; and why his superiors, one day, alarmed by the ardor of his preaching, had sent him in retreat to La Verna.
I studied that face, its features sweet as those of the sainted woman with whom he had fraternally exchanged profound spiritual thoughts. I sensed he must have been able to assume a far harsher expression when, in 1311, the Council of Vienne, with the decretal Exivi de paradiso, had deposed Franciscan superiors hostile to the Spirituals, but had charged the latter to live in peace within the order; and this champion of renunciation had not accepted that shrewd compromise and had fought for the institution of a separate order, based on principles of maximum strictness. This great warrior then lost his battle, for in those years John XXII was advocating a crusade against the followers of Pierre Olieu (among whom Ubertino himself was numbered), and he condemned the monks of Narbonne and Béziers. But Ubertino had not hesitated to defend his friend’s memory against the Pope, and, outdone by his sanctity, John had not dared condemn him (though he then condemned the others). On that occasion, indeed, he offered Ubertino a way of saving himself, first advising him and then commanding him to enter the Cluniac order. Ubertino, apparently so disarmed and fragile, must have been equally skillful in gaining protectors and allies in the papal courts, and, in fact, he agreed to enter the monastery of Gemblach in Flanders, but I believe he never even went there, and he remained in Avignon, under the banner of Cardinal Orsini, to defend the Franciscans’ cause.
Only in recent times (and the rumors I had heard were vague) his star at court had waned, he had had to leave Avignon, and the Pope had this indomitable man pursued as a heretic who per mundum discurrit vagabundus. Then, it was said, all trace of him was lost. That afternoon I had learned, from the dialogue between William and the abbot, that he was hidden here in this abbey. And now I saw him before me.
“William,” he was saying, “they were on the point of killing me, you know. I had to flee in the dead of night.”
“Who wanted to kill you? John?”
“No. John has never been fond of me, but he has never ceased to respect me. After all, he was the one who offered me a way of avoiding a trial ten years ago, commanding me to enter the Benedictines, and so silencing my enemies. They muttered for a long time, they waxed ironical on the fact that a champion of poverty should enter such a rich order and live at the court of Cardinal Orsini. … William, you know my contempt for the things of this earth! But it was the way to remain in Avignon and defend my brothers. The Pope is afraid of Orsini, he would never have harmed a hair of my head. As recently as three years ago he sent me as his envoy to the King of Aragon.”
“Then who wished you ill?”
“All of them. The curia. They tried to assassinate me twice. They tried to silence me. You know what happened five years ago. The Beghards of Narbonne had been condemned two years before, and Berengar Talloni, though he was one of the judges, had appealed to the Pope. Those were difficult moments. John had already issued two bulls against the Spirituals, and even Michael of Cesena had given up—by the way, when does he arrive?”
“He will be here in two days’ time.”
“Michael ... I have not seen him for so long. Now he has come around, he understands what we wanted, the Perugia chapter asserted that we were right. But then, still in 1318, he gave in to the Pope and turned over to him five Spirituals of Provence who were resisting submission. Burned, William ... Oh, it is horrible!” He hid his face in his hands.
“But what exactly happened after Talloni’s appeal?” William asked.
“John had to reopen the debate, you understand? He has to do it, because in the curia, too, there were men seized with doubt, even the Franciscans in the curia—pharisees, whited sepulchers, ready to sell themselves for a prebend, but they were seized with doubt. It was then that John asked me to draw up a memorial on poverty. It was a fine work, William, may God forgive my pride. …”
“I have read it. Michael showed it to me.”
“There were the hesitant, even among our own men, the Provincial of Aquitaine, the Cardinal of San Vitale, the Bishop of Kaffa. …”
“An idiot,” William said.
“Rest in peace. He was gathered to God two years ago.”
“God was not so compassionate. That was a false report that arrived from Constantinople. He is still in our midst, and I am told he will be a member of the legation. God protect us!”
But he is favorable to the chapter of Perugia,” Ubertino said.
“Exactly. He belongs to that race of men who are always their adversary’s best champions.”
“To tell the truth,” Ubertino said, “even then he was no great help to the cause. And it all came to nothing, but at least the idea was not declared heretical, and this was important. And so the others have never forgiven me. They have tried to harm me in every way, they have said that I was at Sachsenhausen three years ago, when Louis proclaimed John a heretic. And yet they all knew I was in Avignon that July with Orsini. … They found that parts of the Emperor’s declaration reflected my ideas. What madness.”
“Not all that mad,” William said. “I had given him the ideas, taking them from your Declaration of Avignon, and from some pages of Olieu.”
“You?” Ubertino exclaimed, between amazement and joy. “But then you agree with me!”
William seemed embarrassed. “They were the right ideas for the Emperor, at that moment,” he said evasively.
Ubertino looked at him suspiciously. “Ah, but you don’t really believe them, do you?”
“Tell me,” William said, “tell me how you saved yourself from those dogs.”
“Ah, dogs indeed, William. Rabid dogs. I found myself even in conflict with Bonagratia, you know?”
“But Bonagratia is on our side!”
“Now he is, after I spoke at length with him. Then he was convinced, and he protested against the Ad conditorem canonum. And the Pope imprisoned him for a year.”
“I have heard he is now close to a friend of mine in the curia, William of Occam.”
“I knew him only slightly. I don’t like him. A man without fervor, all head, no heart.”
“But the head is beautiful.”
“Perhaps, and it will take him to hell.”
“Then I will see him again down there, and we will argue logic.”
“Hush, William,” Ubertino said, smiling with deep affection, “you are better than your philosophers. If only you had wanted ...”
“What?”
“When we saw each other the last time in Umbria—remember?—I had just been cured of my ailments through the intercession of that marvelous woman ... Clare of Montefalco ...” he murmured, his face radiant. “Clare ... When female nature, naturally so perverse, becomes sublime through holiness, then it can be the noblest vehicle of grace. You know how my life has been inspired by the purest chastity, William”—he grasped my master’s arm, convulsively—“you know with what ... fierce—yes, that’s the word—with what fierce thirst for penance I have tried to mortify in myself the throbbing of the flesh, and make myself wholly transparent to the love of Jesus Crucified. … And yet, three women in my life have been three celestial messengers for me. Angela of Foligno, Margaret of Città di Castello (who revealed the end of my book to me when I had written only a third of it), and finally Clare of Montefalco. It was a reward from heaven that I, yes, I, should investigate her miracles and proclaim her sainthood to the crowds, before Holy Mother Church moved. And you were there, William, and you could have helped me in that holy endeavor, and you would not—”
“But the holy endeavor that you invited me to share was sending Bentivenga, Jacomo, and Giovannuccio to the stake,” William said softly.
“They were besmirching her memory with their perversions. And you were an inquisitor!”
“And that was precisely why I asked to be relieved of that position. I did not like the business. Nor did I like—I shall be frank—the way you induced Bentivenga to confess his errors. You pretended you wished to enter his sect, if sect it was; you stole his secrets from him, and you had him arrested.”
“But that is the way to proceed against the enemies of Christ! They were heretics, they were Pseudo Apostles, they reeked of the sulphur of Fra Dolcino!”
“They were Clare’s friends.”
“No, William, you must not cast even the hint of a shadow on Clare’s memory.”
“But they were associated with her.”
“They were Minorites, they called themselves Spirituals, and instead they were monks of the community! But you know it emerged clearly at the trial that Bentivenga of Gubbio proclaimed himself an apostle, and then he and Giovannuccio of Bevagna seduced nuns, telling them hell does not exist, that carnal desires can be satisfied without offending God, that the body of Christ (Lord, forgive me!) can be received after a man has lain with a nun, that the Magdalen found more favor in the Lord’s sight than the virgin Agnes, that what the vulgar call the Devil is God Himself, because the Devil is knowledge and God is by definition knowledge! And it was the blessed Clare, after hearing this talk, who had the vision in which God Himself told her they were wicked followers of the Spiritus Libertatis!”
“They were Minorites whose minds were aflame with the same visions as Clare’s, and often the step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is very brief,” William said.
Ubertino wrung his hands and his eyes were again veiled with tears. “Don’t say that, William. How can you confound the moment of ecstatic love, which burns the viscera with the perfume of incense, and the disorder of the senses, which reeks of sulphur? Bentivenga urged others to touch a body’s naked limbs; he declared this was the only way to freedom from the dominion of the senses, homo nudus cum nuda iacebat, ‘naked they lay together, man and woman. …’ ”
“Et non commiscebantur ad invicem, but there was no conjunction.”
“Lies! They were seeking pleasure, and they found it. If carnal stimulus was felt, they did not consider it a sin if, to satisfy it, man and woman lay together, and the one touched and kissed the other in every part, and naked belly was joined to naked belly!”
I confess. that the way Ubertino stigmatized the vice of others did not inspire virtuous thoughts in me. My master must have realized I was agitated, and he interrupted the holy man.
“Yours is an ardent spirit, Ubertino, both in love of God and in hatred of evil. What I meant is that there is little difference between the ardor of the seraphim and the ardor of Lucifer, because they are always born from an extreme igniting of the will.”
“Oh, there is a difference, and I know it!” Ubertino said, inspired. “You mean that between desiring good and desiring evil there is a brief step, because it is always a matter of directing the will. This is true. But the difference lies in the object, and the object is clearly recognizable. God on this side, the Devil on that.”
“And I fear I no longer know how to distinguish, Ubertino. Wasn’t it your Angela of Foligno who told of that day when her spirit was transported and she found herself in the sepulcher of Christ? Didn’t she tell how first she kissed his breast and saw him lying with his eyes closed, then she kissed his mouth, and there rose from those lips an ineffable sweetness, and after a brief pause she lay her cheek against the cheek of Christ and Christ put his hand to her cheek and pressed her to him and—as she said—her happiness became sublime? ...”
“What does this have to do with the urge of the senses?” Ubertino asked. “It was a mystical experience, and the body was our Lord’s.”
“Perhaps I am accustomed to Oxford,” William said, “where even mystical experience was of another sort. ...”
“All in the head.” Ubertino smiled.
“Or in the eyes. God perceived as light, in the rays of the sun, the images of mirrors, the diffusion of colors over the parts of ordered matter, in the reflections of daylight on wet leaves ... Isn’t this love closer to Francis’s when he praises God in His creatures, flowers, grass, water, air? I don’t believe this type of love can produce any snare. Whereas I’m suspicious of a love that transmutes into a colloquy with the Almighty the shudders felt in fleshly contacts. ...”
“You blaspheme, William! It is not the same thing. There is an immense abyss between the high ecstasy of the heart loving Christ Crucified and the base, corrupt ecstasy of the Pseudo Apostles of Montefalco. ...”
“They were not Pseudo Apostles, they were Brothers of the Free Spirit; you said as much yourself.”
“What difference is there? You haven’t heard everything about that trial, I myself never dared record certain confessions, for fear of casting, if only for a moment, the shadow of the Devil on the atmosphere of sanctity Clare had created in that place. But I learned certain things, certain things, William! They gathered at night in a cellar, they took a newborn boy, they threw him from one to another until he died, of blows ... or other causes. ... And he who caught him alive for the last time, and held him as he died, became the leader of the sect. ... And the child’s body was torn to pieces and mixed with flour, to make blasphemous hosts!” “Ubertino,” William said firmly, “these things were said, many centuries ago, by the Armenian bishops, about the sect of the Paulicians. And about the Bogomils.”
“What does that matter? The Devil is stubborn, he follows a pattern in his snares and his seductions, he repeats his rituals at a distance of millennia, he is always the same, this is precisely why he is recogniz
ed as the enemy! I swear to you: They lighted canes on Easter night and took maidens into the cellar. Then they extinguished the candles and threw themselves on the maidens, even if they were bound to them by ties of blood. ... And if from this conjunction a baby was born, the infernal rite was resumed, all around a little jar of wine, which they called the keg, and they became drunk and would cut the baby to pieces, and pour its blood into the goblet, and they threw babies on the fire, still alive, and they mixed the baby’s ashes and his blood, and drank!”
“But Michael Psellus wrote this in his book on the workings of devils three hundred years ago! Who told you these things?”
“They did. Bentivenga and the others, and under torture!”
“There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him. ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame. Under torture Bentivenga may have told the most absurd lies, because it was no longer himself speaking, but his lust, the devils of his soul.”
“Lust?”
“Yes, there is a lust for pain, as there is a lust for adoration, and even a lust for humility. If it took so little to make the rebellious angels direct their ardor away from worship and humility toward pride and revolt, what can we expect of a human being? There, now you know: this was the thought that struck me in the course of my inquisitions. And this is why I gave up that activity. I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.”
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