The Rebirth of Venus

by Linda Proud

  Erasmus stared at him with his mouth open. Once he had recovered, he begged God’s forgiveness. ‘How often do I presume I am in control of my life? How often? Too often!’

  John Colet had the look of a father swan watching his first cygnet take off in flight. ‘Now,’ he said, gazing round the table, ‘what about the rest of you?’

  I left my friends at More’s great stone house by the stream, an old manor, a relic from a previous age. The door his servant opened revealed the warmth of domesticity within and Erasmus jumped across the threshold with great happiness, crying to Mistress More, ‘Bring me food, Jane, and lots of it! For I have dined with Colet this night and am starving.’

  Having said goodbye, I stood there and watched the door close before turning back. I returned to St Paul’s going by Cheapside, a wide street lined with shops which by day sell goldwork, each small piece the product of the work of up to twenty men who labour in the cramped workshops of Clerkenwell. Here their pieces are sold to the wealthy citizens of London. It is a street that attracts Italian merchants, so I only walk it when the shops are closed, hugging the shadows, avoiding any chance meeting with someone who might recognise me, especially if he be a Dominican. For the same reason I’ve chosen these lodgings near the cathedral in a dank courtyard tenement which Erasmus calls ‘Aphrodite’s Alley’. I tell him I live here because it is cheap, as cheap as the drabs who hover at the door of the tavern at its entrance.

  ‘It would be cheaper to lodge in the deanery: it would be free,’ he said.

  But the Dean of St Paul’s is too often visited by officers of the Church and by friars.

  ‘I want my independence,’ I tell Erasmus.

  And so I come home, walking past the drabs who have given up trying to interest me in their questionable charms. I have never lain with a woman other than my wife, and I do not intend to do so. I have sworn in solemn ceremony to be chaste and although I have broken my vows in every other respect, in that one I remain true.

  I shall not marry. I shall not return to Italy. I shall not be a schoolmaster.

  But what, then, shall I do? Live out my days until I die.

  On my desk is a letter from the Prior of Blackfriars. I dare not open it.

  24

  A WARNING FROM MY BROTHER

  1486

  THAT WINTER, PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA HAD ROME TALKING about God. Now, that was a wonder. The great debate, for which men began to arrive from all parts of the Christian world, was scheduled to begin at Epiphany, the day of the Magi. For the first time, the Platonic tradition was to be submitted to public debate so that, in future, it would no longer be considered errant, pagan or strange. Pico was going to cut off the stagnant canals and redirect the water into its original course, the river of wisdom that flows from God.

  I heard that, back in Florence, Ficino was expressing dismay. Under the influence of Mithridates, Pico had in various places in his theses insulted Ficino for limiting his study to Plato while ignoring the later platonists. That, of course, hurt Ficino considerably, but what caused his dismay was that his teaching, corrupted, as he saw it, by Pico’s own lack of understanding, was to be put on public display in Rome by one who was not yet twenty-four years old. It was bound to fail, to bring further ignominy to Platonism rather than the hoped-for acceptance.

  I celebrated the Feast of the Nativity with my brother, Rafaello, at the Palazzo de’ Maffei. Afterwards, when we were alone in his chamber, he sat by the fire, head down, studiously pulling his shirt through the gap between lower and upper sleeve, seemingly intent on making a fine puff of linen. I knew that I would not like what he was about to say.

  ‘The Pope is calling for the debate to be postponed until the commission has studied this unheard-of wealth of propositions. Nine hundred! Why, the eldest and wisest amongst the commissioners is famous for his own debate on twenty propositions, a number considered extraordinary at the time. Tell Pico, warn him, to do everything he is told to do with quiet obedience and respect to His Holiness.’

  I told Rafaello of Pico’s aim to convert the squabbling theologians from disputation to contemplation. He greeted this cynically. Getting up, he went and closed all the doors to the room before coming back to the fire. He drew his chair closer to mine and said softly, ‘This Mother Church of ours is as capable of killing her own sons as Medea. Do not suppose that just because Pico is under the protection of Lorenzo de’ Medici he will be safe from harm.’ My cautious brother – naturally a man so adept in sealing his lips would find someone like Pico alarming.

  ‘Rafaello, do you want to see this debate held?’ I asked.

  ‘I do, and I shall work hard to see that it happens, but tell Pico what I have said, and make sure he understands. The Inquisition is governed by Spain. We Italians, we understand human nature; we can elect a fornicator as pope and still remain sincere in our love of God. Spaniards – it is all light and dark for them, with no shades in between. I tell you, no Christian today is advised to do anything to attract the attention of the Grand Inquisitor. Terrible stories are beginning to come out of Spain about the expulsion of Marranos. It is said that they are Christians on the outside but remain Jews within, and if the Inquisition can prove it against anyone, that man is burned at the stake. They say this purifies his soul; I say it purifies Spanish blood. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand are dedicated to cleansing the country of Moors and Jews and reuniting Spain under a Christian banner. The worst of it is, Torquemada is beginning to look beyond Jews and Moors for his heretics.’

  In the short time I had been in Rome, I had often seen the progress of cardinals through the city, passing through the crowds in the splendour of princes, and the most extravagant, least religious of them all was a Spaniard, Rodrigo Borgia.

  Rafaello rolled his eyes when I mentioned the name. ‘Yes, I agree, Torquemada and Borgia cannot fit together in one sentence and make sense. But there you have it – light and dark. Beware Spain. I fear for that young pudding, Giovanni de’ Medici, who, I can tell you, is set to become a cardinal at the next election. How can a mere boy swim in a sea such as this? If Lorenzo loves his son, he should abandon his ambitions. He has influence in many places, but in Rome very little and in Spain none at all.’ He sat back and swilled his wine in its glass, looking at the ruby liquid in the firelight. ‘I do not have to tell you, I think, that you are not to mention this conversation to anyone other than Pico, nor use my name to endorse your cause.’

  ‘I wish you would come and live in Florence. You would not have to whisper all the time.’

  Rafaello smiled. ‘What good would I be to you in Florence? Be grateful that you have me here. But Maso, I wish to live a long life, so please, keep your firebrands away from my hay.’

  25

  CATERINA SFORZA RIDES AGAIN

  1487

  THERE HAD BEEN AN INSURRECTION AT FORLÌ A YEAR OR so previously, when the people, oppressed by the taxes that Girolamo Riario had laid upon them, rose up and seized the castle. Riario, suffering some ailment, had been with his wife at Imola at the time. With her husband incapacitated, it had been Caterina Sforza who had ridden to Forlì to put the insurrection down. Now there had been a second insurrection there, and I heard about it in a market in Rome. As before, Riario was at Imola and indisposed; as before, it was his wife who took up arms. Only this time… I listened agog to what a baker was telling his customers.

  ‘Have you heard? Caterina Sforza! She who can put down a mob assisted only by one gentleman and two ladies. Caterina, who rode through Rome in full armour to take the Castel Sant’Angelo for the Riario.’

  ‘God be praised, she failed in that,’ said a priest handing over the money for his armful of loaves.

  ‘But she succeeds in the Romagna where she failed in Rome.

  Ha!’

  ‘So she has put down the good folk of Forlì again?’

  ‘Again! Only this time… this time…’ the bak
er could not speak for laughing. His customers laughed with him, in anticipation of what he was going to say.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the baker, wiping his eyes with his apron. ‘Forgive me, padre.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For what I am about to tell you. Ha! Ha! Oh dear…’

  Before the baker could continue, the man selling olives at the next stall pre-empted him. ‘She was nine months pregnant!’

  ‘Nine months?’ cried a peasant woman. ‘Gesumaria!’

  The priest dropped his loaves.

  ‘Rode?’ continued the contadina. ‘On a horse? Nine months pregnant? On a horse? Rode? Holy Madonna Maria!’

  ‘It is true, it is true!’ cried the baker. ‘Full with child, she galloped from Imola to Forlì, relieved the castle and then galloped back to have the baby. Those good folk of Forlì, eh? How can a man stand up in daylight and say, “I am a man of Forlì”? Ha! Ha! Oh, the shame! Ow, by God I have a stitch! Oh dear, oh dear. Caterina Sforza – an Amazon. What was the name of the Amazon queen? Pen – Penelope? Olà, scholar, what was her name?’

  ‘Penthesilea,’ I said and turned away laughing, wondering what the truth was behind these exaggerations. I discovered from Rafaello later that, when it comes to Caterina Sforza, no exaggeration can do her justice. It was all true. Later that same year, on the third insurrection, she had more than sixty men executed. That was the last protest of the good folk of Forlì.

  26

  ANOTHER WARNING

  1487

  FOR A MONTH WE WAITED WHILE THE COMMISSION deliberated on the debate. Men gathered in Pico’s apartments, attracted both by the man and his philosophy. All of them were eccentric, one way or another. Michele Marullus, for instance. He came to us as a Greek scholar studying Plato in Rome, but we soon learnt that not only was he a soldier of fortune but one of the legendary stratioti; not an honest refugee of Constantinople as we had supposed, driven west by the Turks, but one who had been condemned by the Greek church as a heretic. The stratioti – those mercenaries who create havoc, storming the enemy brandishing scimitars, sweeping off heads with one strike and impaling them on lances. More than once I had been threatened with them as a child when I was naughty. To meet one and find him a charming and erudite man was a novelty for all of us. In conversation with Pico, Marullus revealed secrets of the stratioti that none of us knew except Pico himself, who drew Marullus out with careful questioning.

  ‘Men say that the stratioti are a survival of the legions of the Roman empire.’

  ‘We have an oral tradition which says that it is so.’

  ‘Most of the legions, I believe, were worshippers of Mithras.’

  His eyes heavily lidded, Marullus looked deceptively sleepy, even dull, but we were looking at a hooded falcon.

  ‘Mithras the bull-slayer,’ said Pico.

  Marullus yawned. ‘I don’t think the Romans were interested in sacrificing bulls. To be a member of the cult requires, required, a high level of spiritual and moral discipline.’

  The two men regarded each other like chess players. Pico had caught the slip in tenses, as he was meant to. ‘Is the cult still alive?’

  ‘It is, amongst the stratioti.’

  ‘And you?’

  Marullus turned his head slowly left and right, then, looking at Pico, lifted his chin – an almost imperceptible assent. ‘More properly,’ he said in a low tone, ‘a Zoroastrian.’ If Marullus had calculated this to attract Pico, that avid collector of men of all religions, he succeeded. What interested Pico most, however, was that here was a Greek who was not a Christian. He admired that courageous streak of individuality. So Marullus joined our circle and enjoyed his status as a figure of legend and terror, although to me he was always pleasant, as any man was who wished to gain the favour of Poliziano.

  One of the most renowned scholars in Rome at the time, one who was in the city through his own volition and not at the invitation of Pico, was a Venetian friend of Poliziano’s called Ermolao Barbaro. In him Pico found someone neither eccentric nor obsequious. Indeed, after a few minutes’ conversation, Pico was treating the older man with deference, eager to earn his good opinion. Barbaro was working on a new translation of Aristotle with a group of scholars, some of whom you know, Erasmo, for among them were our own William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre. You will have heard from them of the splendour of this man. If you ever wondered why Linacre the physician is at heart a poet, we have Barbaro to thank. His very speech was lyrical; he, a son of Harmonia, commanded large groups in a soft and gentle, almost lisping voice.

  Such was his standing that I did not try to approach him or make myself known. I, the companion of Pico, of Poliziano, the friend of Lorenzo de’ Medici, was cowed by the reputation of this philosopher of Aristotle. But one day I had to go to the papal library to collect books for Pico. I noticed two things on entry: one was that Barbaro was present and alone; the other was that there was a guard in the library standing close to the pile of books reserved for Pico. Even before I could hesitate, Barbaro looked up and called me to him by name.

  ‘Ah, Tommaso,’ he said, ‘thank you for coming. I am having trouble with this passage. How do you read it?’

  Bemused, I bent over the Greek volume open on the table.

  ‘Do not pick up those books,’ Barbaro said in pure Attic.

  ‘Is it a trap?’ I asked in the same language.

  The librarian approached. ‘Are you the secretary of Pico della Mirandola? I have some books put by for him.’

  ‘This,’ said Barbaro, straightening to his full height, ‘is the brother of Rafaello de’ Maffei. He is working with me. Please, do not disturb us.’

  The librarian lifted his chin with a sniff and left us.

  ‘Is it a trap?’ I repeated.

  ‘They are keeping a close eye on Pico and are looking for evidence against him. Do not pick up those books: they are Hebrew texts.’

  Barbaro was one of those men to whom neatness and good- grooming come naturally so that he looked as if he arose each morning already shaved. His face seemed to be the work of a sculptor with its slender, aristocratic nose and polished jaw. Everything about him said that here was a Venetian, one of the families of the Senate, a republican. Kings wear their wealth in gold and jewels to overawe their subjects; Ermolao Barbaro needed no such trinkets. In this unadorned man, his words were his jewels, unostentatious but rich and glowing.

  Poliziano, who had befriended Barbaro during his exile in Venice, truly admired but few men, and this was one of them.

  ‘Go back to Florence,’ Barbaro said. ‘Pico is inflamed with God to the point of rashness. He is too young to understand the ways of men. They are jealous of him and will destroy him if they can. Everyone thinks he is at best vain, at worst a heretic. We know he is neither.’ He gazed at me with his large, sympathetic eyes. ‘He thinks he has only to convince Pope Innocent of his ideas and Christendom will be transformed, but those ideas of his are quite crepuscular. That he is running rings around the logicians as to make them giddy will not persuade them to his view. No man lays down his beliefs on the argument of another. What does Pico seek to prove? That logic is a false trail? Well, the logicians will prove him wrong and, if they do not, they will burn him. The wise man walks quietly and draws no attention to himself. Why, last summer, that man called Mercurio arrived in Rome and was promptly arrested for a rite he had performed in public two years previously. Sacrificed a peacock as I heard it.’

  ‘That was a lie. Besides, they set him free.’

  ‘Yes, but only after he had tried to commit suicide by ripping the flesh off his own face. The authorities did not have the heart to kill him after that.’

  I had not heard that gruesome detail before.

  ‘Pico’s motley, cosmopolitan, heterodox companions, that exotic train of Jews, Arabs, Zoroastrians and Brahmins, Mithridates, Mercurio, Marullus – can you not see th
e danger of mere association? Tommaso, leave. Go back to Florence and my dear Poliziano. Stars that shoot are dying stars. Return to that heavy planet which is our Angelo. With him you will be safe.’

  ‘Do you not see the value in what Pico is trying to do?’

  ‘Of course I see the value, but such an endeavour is for a mature man. Pico should not attempt this alone. Public disputation!’ Barbaro leaned even closer to me. His mantle was fragrant with cleanliness. ‘Get him home to Florence. I will come there shortly. The three of us – Pico, Poliziano and myself – will work on Aristotle together to free him of the distortions of his Arab commentators. We shall reveal him in his purity, clear the barnacles off him, sweep away the false interpretations, strip him down to his pure Greek self.’

  The image that came to mind as he spoke was that of the Three Graces, the triple aspect of Venus. Pico – Poliziano – Barbaro in the dance of the love of language and of truth.

  ‘I shall see what I can do.’

  ‘Leave the books. Tell Pico that it is too dangerous to collect them.’

  27

  PICO IS CONDEMNED

  1487

  PICO APPEARED EVERY DAY AT SITTINGS OF THE EXAMINING council which comprised bishops and theologians well-versed in the methods of scholastic dispute.

  ‘It is not going well,’ my brother told me. ‘Murmurs of heresy are growing and Pico is not helping himself by being brash and dismissive of the council.’

  ‘Heresy’ is a word by which the righteous seek to terrify the unrighteous. I had heard one theologian define ‘martyr’ as a man who is willing to die for his beliefs and Pico ask breezily if this definition did not also apply to a heretic. The man’s eyes had narrowed to slits.