The sky burst, broke open, as if a frozen-solid hatch had been pried open. Chunks of ice broke off and plummeted. Cold air wafted in his face. A flower shattered and trickled down like broken glass.
Over the horizon a second sun had appeared, gleaming blue-white but as weak as a star that was light-years away. Wind swept over rippled snowfields, and the man who seemed to be coming straight out of the distant sun cast a long, thin shadow—as did his companion, the wolf.
Pale phantom suns illuminated the broken-open world; from their edges sprayed electric discharges, overlapping with those of Highgate.
“I suspected it,” Don Fernando sighed, scurrying back and forth on the polished stone tabletop. “I suspected it.”
They waited silently until the two figures had approached and stopped. The man from the ice, whose cowl extended over his nose, opened the fastener of his robe and took out a tied-up bundle he had carried against his chest. Snow sprinkled off his clothing. His eyes smoldered from under the frost-covered hood like dim protosuns clouded with dust and haze. He tossed the bundle onto the table.
The wolf growled. From his belly fur hung beads of ice, which now thawed.
“Don’t start peeing now too,” said Don Fernando.
“Shut your fresh mouth, you lousy rat,” the wolf growled, “or else…”
“Yeah, come up with something new, for a change, you mangy mutt,” Don Fernando said in a bored tone.
The wolf snapped at him, but with a single bound Don Fernando had escaped onto the angel’s lap.
“Did you see that?” Don Fernando asked indignantly. “He has taken this nasty form for so long that he behaves like an animal!”
“Nasty? That’s coming from you, you vermin!” the wolf grumbled.
“Hey! How dare you? You’ve gotten so stupid that you can’t even piss your name in the snow,” Don Fernando jeered.
“Stop!” said the hooded man, pushing back his cowl and wiping the thawing frost from his eyebrows. “It seems that the improbable case of an oscillation has actually occurred.” His voice sounded muffled through his wool-lined mask.
“I have to see that,” said the man some called the angel. “A further variant, I assume.”
The man from the cold nodded. “Come, Sir Whitefang!” he said to his companion, the wolf. “Let’s not be tardy.”
Don Fernando watched with fascination as the man from the ice and his companion, the wolf, walking backward, receded. As they did so, they effaced their own tracks, for the wind-rippled snow was untouched as soon as the next step had been taken. They tramped away across the ice field; their shadows grew longer and longer, as the weakly gleaming sun withdrew toward the horizon and slowly set.
Chunks of ice formed from meltwater, left the grass and rose from the bushes, shot up and froze solid at the edges of the sky, as it closed with a crunch. The crack lapped by blue electric discharges merged with the evening sky, in which a few veils of clouds glowed and then dissipated.
“Show me,” said Don Fernando, making himself comfortable on the shoulder of the angel.
The angel untied the damp bundle and smoothed out the pages.
“Let’s take a look at this variant.”
Writing rose before them.
II
The Cusan Acceleratio
Whoever possesses the sense of possibility does not say, for example: here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents: Here this or that might, could or should happen; and if he is told that something is the way it is, then he thinks: Well, it could probably also be different. Thus the sense of possibility could be defined, at heart, as the ability to imagine everything that could just as well be and to give no more importance to what is than to what is not.
ROBERT MUSIL
There is a certain irony in the attempts that have been made to elevate Nicolaus Cusanus, the papal legate and personal friend of Pope Pius II, into the guardian and protector of Western science in the face of a Church hostile to enlightenment and progress, as if there had ever been tendencies of that sort on the part of the clergy. Certainly, there were at times differences of opinion and disputes over technical questions of astronomy and cosmology, but those debates are the expression and sign of a vibrant scholarly life—indeed, its precondition. After the decline of the Roman Empire, who else but the Church carefully preserved over many centuries the treasures of Greek, Roman, and Oriental erudition? Who reproduced and disseminated the inestimably valuable works of our forebears? Who studied, interpreted, and taught their content? In the Church, there is a long, unbroken, venerable tradition of scientific inquiry into Creation. It required no Cusan and no “Acceleratio” to, as Diderot wrote, “clear a path for science” and “pave the way for technological progress.” That is, if truth be told, a historical fiction, as in those virtual historical constructions that are increasingly in fashion nowadays, which proliferate more and more but serve only to obscure the facts and distort the view of reality.
Let us consider the facts: two letters penned by the cardinal, both written on March 12 of the year 1452 during a brief stay in his former parish of St. Florin in Koblenz. One to Dietrich von Moers, the archbishop of Cologne, advising him to request papal support in a trial in which a woman of unknown origins is accused of heresy. Another to Pope Nicholas V, proposing the founding of a scientific academy by the Holy See dedicated specifically to unusual natural phenomena.
What mysteries have been read into those last February days, which the cardinal, coming from Brussels via Leuven and Maastricht, spent in Cologne, to open there a provincial council! There is talk of a “Paul experience” (as if he had ever been a Saul!); of strange letters delivered to him by a scholar shrouded in mystery; of an encounter with an enigmatic beauty from a distant land who beguiled him and foretold the future to him.
Indeed, as a papal diplomat and traveler in matters of restructuring and organization of the Church, Cusanus had up to that point—most likely for reasons of time alone—not devoted much attention to the promotion of the sciences, had in fact been unable to do so, although he was, as we know today, ahead of his time in questions of astronomy and cosmology, practiced experimental physics, and was the first to seriously deal mathematically with the concept of infinity. But for his efforts to strengthen the institutionalization of scholarship and instruction on the part of the Church, neither mysterious scholars nor beguiling sibyls were required. It was a demand of the time, and the cardinal from Kues on the Moselle was certainly only one of many who knew how to interpret properly the signs of the time. The Cusan Acceleratio, as Leibniz postulated it, is a chimera. The claim that it was Cusanus alone who “awakened a sleepy Church in conflict over ridiculous matters of faith,” as Voltaire put it, is a fiction. The thunder of modern artillery, which Sultan Mehmed II mounted outside the gates of Constantinople the following year and against whose firepower the West was defenseless, was loud enough to shake from its slumber the entire Occident—and finally to unite it.
* * *
THOUGH THIS INTERPRETATION cannot be regarded as the official position of the Vatican in the rekindled scholarly debate over the so-called Cusan Acceleratio, it would undoubtedly earn its approval. It is the duty of the chronicler to record the most important facts of the past five centuries, which have helped shape the present state of the world, in particular of the West.
Here they are:
1460
On behalf of Pope Pius II, the papal legate Nicolaus Cusanus and Julius Pomponius Laetus found the humanistic research institute Accademia Romana.
1461
Johannes Regiomontanus is appointed head of the Accademia.
1462
At Nicolaus Cusanus’s suggestion, Johannes Regiomontanus conducts a “measurement of the world.” The results confirm the data of Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276–195 BC), who calculated from the divergent shadow lengths on the meridian arc between Syene (Aswan) and Alexandria a circumference of the Earth of 40,000 kilometers.
; 1463
Death of Pope Pius II and Nicolaus Cusanus in Todi, Umbria, while preparing for a crusade to retake Constantinople.
1467
Pope Paul II, successor to Pius II, pursues the closing of the Accademia Romana, which, for all his sympathy for the revival of the humanist heritage, he regards as a heretical secret society. Julius Pomponius Laetus is accused of blasphemy; another member, Bartolomeo Platina, is tortured. Johannes Regiomontanus and some of his colleagues manage to escape to Milan, where the Sforzas shelter them.
1470
Leonardo da Vinci becomes a member of the Sapienza, as the former Accademia Romana has been called since its exodus. It is known as a center of humanist education and research and becomes the destination of numerous scholars, craftsmen, and students from all over the world.
1475
Introduction of the lodestone on the ships of the Italic League.
1476
Following the death of Johannes Regiomontanus, Leonardo is elected head of the Sapienza.
1478
Invention of the “burning spinner” in the Sapienza by Corbinian Seeshaupter, a gunsmith from Salzburg. Initially fueled with naphtha, later with petroleum and its derivatives, the spinner constitutes a sort of turbine, which is soon employed as a “mechanical slave” in all fields, whether to power vehicles or pumps, in agriculture as well as in industry and increasingly in transportation.
1480
Renewal of the Italic League between Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples, Montferrat, and Savoy for another twenty-five years. Genoa joins.
1481
First performance of Alberti’s Song of the Mechanical Slaves in Milan.
1484
Pope Sixtus IV declares that there must be undiscovered lands in the western sea. A contrary view, as disseminated by some misguided scholars who believed that toward the west Marco Polo’s legendary Cathay was separated from our world only by an ocean, would presuppose an imbalance of Creation. That would be unchristian, heretical.
1486
Giovanni Caboto, sent by the Signoria of his hometown of Genoa in search of new lands in the western part of the world, reaches on St. Christopher’s Day (July 25) the mouth of the Delaware. On his second expedition (1488–1490) he explores the coast between the mouth of the Savannah and that of the St. Lawrence. On the third journey (1492–1495), which serves the construction of fortified bases and trading stations and on which his son Sebastiano accompanies him, he meets his death during an armed confrontation with indigenous people of Terranova. He is buried on Capo Caboto, which was named for him. His son Sebastiano successfully completes the expedition.
1489
While the galleons of the Grand Duke of Tuscany explore the mouth of the Mississippi and the coast of Yucatán, Venetian trading captains establish at the behest of their Signoria fortified trading posts on the northern coast of southern Terranova, which must increasingly fend off rapacious attacks by Portuguese and Spanish seafarers, after the tidings of abundant troves of gold have reached Europe.
1492
First successful firing of a “Milan,” also known as a “firefly,” a missile propelled by a “burning tube.” Produced in the smithies of the Sapienza and launched by a catapult at a steep angle, the projectile covers a distance of twenty stadia or two and a half Roman milia and carries a bomba with a mastello of naphtha to the target.
1494
Invasion of Lombardy by King Charles VIII of France on the way to Naples. On September 23, encounter in Ticino. The united Italian army under the command of Francesco Gonzaga deals the French a devastating defeat. The Florentine statesman and historian Francesco Guicciardini writes in his Storia d’Italia:
“The so-feared modern French artillery was taken completely by surprise. The infernal shriek of the Milanese fireflies, which raced through the sky, spraying naphtha fire and in a few minutes engulfing the battlefield in smoke and flames, hurtled like the wrath of God into the enemy ranks, whose march soon lacked any battle order. When the horn sounded for the cavalry attack, the horsemen were helplessly dispersed, and the peasants in Savoy abandoned their fields to capture widely scattered saddled horses and sell them everywhere for good money at the markets.
“Francesco ordered the beautiful new French cannons, not a few of which had not managed to fire a single shot, brought to Milan, to have them examined in the foundries…”
1510
Copernicus declines an appointment to the Sapienza.
1512
Michelangelo: “Everywhere in the provinces one hears day and night the hissing and buzzing of the burning spinners. Gone is the bucolic peace of our country. The air is full of smoke and the stink of burnt naphtha. Over the floodplains lies an unhealthy fog, a miasma that takes one’s breath away.”
1576
Giordano Bruno is elected president of the Sapienza.
1613
Johannes Kepler manages to escape the pursuit of the Counter-Reformation in Germany. Together with his mother, he travels via Vienna and Venice to Milan.
1614
Not Galilei but Kepler becomes Bruno’s successor as head of the Sapienza. Galilei demonstratively leaves the academy and retreats to his villa in Arcetri.
1620
Decisive failure of the Counter-Reformation in Europe. Banning and expropriation of the Dominican Order.
1626
Protestant troops unsuccessfully besiege Rome. The Pope flees via Budapest to Krakow.
1627
Defeat of the Nordic army, decimated by epidemics, in the battles of Orvieto and Bologna. Return of the Pope to Rome.
1630
End of the religious war in the Peace of Prague. Reordering of Europe.
1672
Leibniz coins the term “Cusan Acceleratio” of the sciences. Construction of the first functioning mechanical calculating machine.
1674
Naval battle of Chalcis. Liberation of Greece.
1676
Reconquest of Constantinople.
1682
A mercenary army under the command of Condottiere Alessandro Tarvisio defeats the Turks at Tarsus and Mersin. Liberation of Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Cairo in the Second Holy War. Securing of the petroleum wells in Mesopotamia.
1705
Completion of the Suez Canal.
1708
Occupation of Oman and Jask on the Strait of Hormuz by an Italian/German/British expeditionary army in order to secure the shipping lane to the petroleum ports in the Persian Gulf.
1710
Increased construction of ships with powerful burning-spinner motors, in particular seaworthy petroleum freighters, by the European great powers.
1712
For “security reasons,” the military Signoria of Cairo permits only motor-powered ships to pass through the Suez Canal. Sailing ships are forced to take the arduous journey around Africa.
1715
The burning of the petroleum freighter Amalfi reduces Piraeus to ashes.
1720
Sinking of the petroleum freighter Haven in the Gulf of Genoa. Fish and crab stocks are wiped out in a wide radius. The old town of Genoa must be evacuated for several months.
1738
Construction of the first hydrogen-inflated airship by Ian McInnes.
1752
The Glory of Glasgow under Captain Seamus Shaw is the first airship to successfully cross the Atlantic.
1758
Ludwig Euler publishes his pioneering work Calculations for Reaching Outer Space by Means of Reactive Flying Machines.
1763
First successful flight attempts by George Rauschle with the motor-powered airplane Skylark of Massachusetts.
1780
The states of New England win the war of independence due to the air superiority of their maneuverable Arrow motor-powered aircraft, designed by Robert Fulton, over the heavily armed but vulnerable battle cruisers of the Royal Air Navy. Bombing of Boston and Norfolk. Destruction o
f Philadelphia by air-to-surface missiles with phosphorus-naphthalene warheads. Devastating defeat of the British in the air battle over Long Island.
1795
First regular transatlantic air service between Amsterdam and Boston as well as between Rome and Genoa Nova via Ponta Delgado and Bermuda.
1814
Flood disaster in Holland claims over one hundred thousand human lives.
1819
The German North Sea coast is beset by storms with a wind force of up to twelve. Dams broken over a distance of twenty-five miles. Hamburg must be evacuated due to flooding. Holland too is again hit hard. Plans for a joint Northwest European dam project founder on the immense costs.
1822
An estimated one million dead in the worst typhoon within living memory in Bengal. Three million people flee the flooded areas.
1825
A worldwide rise in the sea level registered. Scholars are baffled. Some of them predict a “tropical eon” marked by higher temperatures and stronger air currents in the Earth’s atmosphere. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, the renowned French atmospheric scientist from Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, advances the hypothesis that there could be a causal connection between the excessive burning of petroleum over the previous three hundred years and the change in the global climate.
1830
Orbital Trajectories in Planetary Space, by Carl Friedrich Gauß and Heinrich Olbers, appears.
1845
The computer language ADA, invented by Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, helps the electric Pascal calculating machines achieve a breakthrough. The age of so-called data processing begins.
1854
Publication of the Gauß-Riemann General Theory of Gravitation, which postulates a space-time continuum geometrically deformed by mass.
1866
The last stronghold in the sultanate of Malé must be abandoned. The evacuated occupants receive settlement rights on the Coromandel Coast.
1871
After the monsoon storms at the beginning of the year, the pilots of the Durban-Bombay Line report the flooding of the last Maldive Islands.
1873
Discovery of the mass-energy principle by William Clifford.
1878
The Cusanus Game Page 30