by Linda Proud
‘Seven of the propositions are to be condemned,’ Rafaello said. ‘They have decided that Pico is “in heresy”. This is not the same as being a heretic. Many of us are in heresy, whenever we choose to understand God’s mystery in the light of our own reason rather than accept it as a matter of faith. Nevertheless, he courts danger. He must be advised to surrender his intellect to God and make peace with His Vicar. He must not take the step from being in heresy to being a heretic, or it will be the duty of the Curia to hand him over to the Spaniards to purify his soul with fire. Warn him, Tommaso. Convince him. While he believes himself sent by God and immune to all danger, he is in the worst danger of all.’
I attended the court the next day. Pico defended himself vibrantly, his voice steady and clear, his grey eyes steely. Convinced that a man of truth may win any battle against evil, he stood there like a young king or crusader while around him pressed the infidels, eager to see him fail. I watched from the gallery. After weeks of wearying accusation and defence, the men of the Church, lined up on the bench like rooks, made sombre pronouncement: seven of Pico’s nine hundred propositions had been exposed as heretical, and a further six were of doubtful orthodoxy.
I wanted to jump to my feet and demand, ‘What of the other eight hundred and eighty seven?’ but cowardice prevented it.
Pico stood tall and defiant with only the ghost of surprise showing on his face. He said nothing, made no protest, but after a moment that was silent but for the shuffling and tapping of documents by the whey-faced doctors of the Church, he turned and left the court.
The Pope ordered Pico to do nothing – no debating, no writing – until he had received his decision on the matter. You might as well tell a bee to leave flowers alone. Pico retired to his rooms. During each day he gave every appearance of idleness, but at night… over the next twenty nights he dictated an Apologia, explaining the process of debate to His Holiness as if to a simpleton. As each page was finished, I had to read it through, looking for errors. Those precious, blooming days of May were spent asleep while at night we kept company with bats and demons and ruined our eyes working by candlelight. Cristoforo and I presumed that Pico was writing for future publication, but the clandestine nature of the work was only because Pico did not wish to be arrested before he had finished. As soon as the project ended, he told Cristoforo to send it to Pope Innocent.
‘My lord, my lord,’ said Cristoforo, shaking his head. ‘If you will remember, it was His Holiness who banned you from writing anything.’
‘I know, but once he has read this even he must see reason. We must trust in God.’
A few days later, Rafaello overruled his own counsel for circumspection and went himself to visit Pico. ‘I advise you to leave Rome at once. Incensed by your disobedience, His Holiness is initiating the process to condemn you for heresy. A courier is leaving for Spain and the Grand Inquisitor tonight.’
‘I am more ardent in my faith than most men. What is meant by this word “heresy”? In Greek it simply means “choice”. What is it I am choosing and why is it a sin?’
‘The laws and liturgy of the Holy Roman Church have been established over the centuries by Great Councils, but you are choosing to tread your own path and find your own authorities, many of them pagan – that is the heresy. A son of the Church may do nothing but follow meekly in the way laid down by the Fathers.’
‘That would be all well and good if the result was a faith that was followed by its adherents, but all we have in Christianity is varying degrees of hypocrisy, and the closer one gets to the Pope, the greater the degree of it. I speak to you as a friend, Rafaello.’
My brother nodded. ‘These things may be spoken of in private between friends, but your challenge to Church authority has been very public indeed.’
‘I have no intention of challenging Church authority. The wisdom of the Church is received wisdom, passed down generation after generation by men of varying levels of intelligence and understanding, until what we are left with is a fog of ideas that is supposed to be the basis of our lives. What I challenge is those ideas. They need to be dragged out of the cellar and examined. If anything needs to be put on trial here, it is the assumptions of the average Christian.’
Rafaello’s eyes grew keen, and I knew that if only my brother would be true to himself he would confess to being in full agreement with Pico. But his life was sustained by the offices he held within the Curia, and so he listened as a sympathetic yet wholly orthodox cleric.
‘For example,’ said Pico, not caring how sympathetic Rafaello was or was not, ‘take the doctrine that only a Christian is able to receive salvation. Am I right? Is that a doctrine of the Church?’
Rafaello nodded.
‘Am I also right in thinking that there is no concept of metempsychosis in the Church, no thought that a soul may survive the body and migrate to another?’
‘Absolutely none. As you well know, the teaching of the Church is the resurrection of the body on the Day of Judgement.’
‘So, if I understand it right, and we have only one lifetime, and only Christians may hope for salvation, half the world’s population lives with no hope of heaven. What kind of God is it then to have created Jews and Muslims?’
‘One does not question God. It is one of His Mysteries.’
Pico leaned forward in his chair. ‘Rafaello, do you leave your intelligence outside with your horse when you go into church? Surely you do not believe what you just said?’
Rafaello shifted uncomfortably. ‘Of course I do not. And yet better men than I have believed it, and I will follow them.’
‘Therefore you consider that our religion is a way of devotion and not a way of knowledge? If I am guilty of anything, it is in believing otherwise. I believe we can make the return to God by way of knowledge, and that we should not fear anything we learn. The Church dreads a man who thinks for himself, and that is why I am condemned as a heretic.’
‘That is your choice,’ said Rafaello, smiling grimly. ‘But while you are talking you are losing time. Leave Rome tonight.’
‘What truth is it that cannot accommodate discussion and debate? It is a false truth. Truth itself does not threaten men with imprisonment, or put a wire round their throats and twist them into silence, or put them on a bonfire to die choking on the smoke of their own flesh. The truth sets men free, but everywhere this Christian faith has put men in chains. Something has gone badly awry and must needs be discussed.’
‘They will have the tongue out of your head first.’
‘I will place my trust in God,’ said Pico firmly. ‘I shall not fly.’
28
THE ACADEMY UNDERGROUND
1487
THERE WAS ANOTHER POPE IN ROME, A SECRET ONE WHOM everyone spoke of but few met. Pomponio Leto was the head of an academy which had been outlawed a generation earlier and men spoke of him as if he were a fabulous hero of legend. Pico had tried many routes to meet him but all had failed. We knew he lived on the Esquiline but despite all messages sent to his villa, no invitation arrived. Then one evening a boy came from Ermolao Barbaro, telling Pico he was to come with him.
The boy took us out to the Appian Way and far along that old Roman road, making sure we were not followed. The first Christians had had their own secret meetings here, in the catacombs. These places had been forgotten, had become overgrown, but we were led into one of them by the boy who knew his way well. We went down into a tunnel which, at first, was utterly dark, but there was a faint glimmering light in the distance and we followed it, feeling our way along, sometimes our hands falling on bones stored in one of the many niches that ran the length of the wall. As we turned a bend in the tunnel, more light became visible until, at last, we came into a small cave fully illuminated by flaming torches set in sconces. The chamber was filled with men sitting in a circle around the sage, and by the dancing light I recognised many of them, including Michele Marullu
s and Ermolao Barbaro. And there, in the corner: did my eyes deceive me in the flickering light? But no, when he looked up and met my gaze I recognised my brother, Rafaello. That circumspect, upright member of the Curia was sitting at the feet of Pomponio Leto, a disciple of philosophy.
Pico went forward and grasped the old man’s hand. ‘I was beginning to believe you were a myth.’
‘I would have it so,’ said Leto quietly. The group dispersed so that these two could speak in private. From Rafaello I gathered what I could about the one they referred to as ‘Pontifex Maximus’. He told me that Leto was the master for everyone who followed the way of the Sun, who sought that inner transformation that would free the soul from its earthliness.
‘And that’s why you meet in the dark?’
Rafaello smiled.
‘Honestly, brother,’ I said, ‘I cannot tell you how it pleases me to see you here. Why did you never confide in me?’
‘I never confide in anyone. It’s safest that way.’ Taking a torch, Rafaello guided me around the subterranean galleries, showing me graffiti and wall paintings from the earliest times of our faith. ‘Christianity must be restored to its original purity,’ he said, tracing two arcs of a circle that crossed to form the shape of a fish, a shape known as the vesica piscis. It was known to me well enough: you can see it in most cathedrals from barbarian times, but here was its original. My heart pounded in my chest.
‘Why does the truth have to be underground?’ I asked him. ‘What are we hiding from?’
‘The force that would snuff the truth out, that wants no one to know it. Often it takes the form of the pope.’ Could this be y guarded brother speaking? ‘Everything went wrong when Chris- tianity became the religion of the empire. It became a part of the structure of power, and its essence, which is love, was forgotten.’
‘Some of the men here are not Christians at all, but followers of Mithras and Zoroaster.’
‘That’s why we have the sun as our symbol: it unites us. Pontifex Maximus has no interest in any faith that divides. He seeks unity alone.’
‘Another Ficino.’
‘Indeed, another Ficino. They work together.’
‘They have met?’
‘Not on this plane, perhaps, but the physical world is not the only one, as you keep telling me.’
It is one thing to have interesting theories, quite another to discover they have a reality. Ficino and Leto, he told me, meet often in the angelic realm. I looked to the old man talking so earnestly with Pico. Every fibre in Pico was quick and alert, as if knowing this one conversation was all he would ever have. Their faces were so close that nothing could be heard of what they were saying: it was like looking at Socrates being interrogated by an impatient disciple. Leto’s quiet repose was unruffled by the young man’s vivacity. He answered all Pico’s questions briefly and in ways, I heard later, that surprised him.
I realised what we had in Florence: a sage of the ancient wisdom who walked abroad in daylight. We had no need for clandestine, secret meetings in subterranean burial grounds. While Lorenzo ruled Florence, the truth walked free. Then I kicked myself for having been unwise: I should have stayed with Ficino as instructed and not followed this self-intoxicated flibbertigibbet, Pico, who, while men so much older and wiser than he met in secret, had chosen open battle with the Church. But my other half, the would-be adventurer, snorted at this. We, after all, were attempting that which no one else had the courage to do: challenging the dogma and authority that shackled us.
When we returned to our lodgings by starlight along the cobbled path of the Appian Way, our step was light and bouncing. I felt as if I had walked this way before, many times over the aeons, and always with the same purpose. Pico said that Leto had told him that what he was doing was risky, but that a man who risked so much was beloved of God.
‘He told me to have no fear, that the work I do is divine work, and divinely ordained. He said that the sun clearly shines in my breast and that I am to trust it. I shall be remaining in Rome.’
‘Oh, my lord, no!’ said Cristoforo.
29
PICO IN FLIGHT
1487
IT TOOK NEARLY A YEAR FOR THE POPE TO MAKE UP HIS MIND on the troublesome subject of Pico della Mirandola, but in August Rafaello told us that a bull of excommunication was being drafted. Pico did nothing but stayed on in Rome. Then, in Advent, it became public and the bull was read out in every church throughout Christendom. What did the average layman make of it? – this long document in Latin that condemned the Count of Concordia for offering to debate certain propositions ‘savouring of heresy, derived from occult doctrines, renovating the errors of pagan philosophers, cherishing the deceits of the Jews, and promoting certain arts, disguised as natural philosophy, harmful to the Catholic faith and human kind.’
I had a picture of the good folk of all parishes shifting restlessly through this meaningless and interminable bull, perhaps explaining it to each other afterwards, if the priest had not translated it for them, that the pope was angry, that someone was a heretic and would surely be burned, that Concordia was a tiny state somewhere in Italy.
In Florence, however, cries of horror and outrage went up. In a letter Angelo told me that he had heard it read out in the Duomo in sombre tones by the archbishop. ‘I cried out as if pierced by pain; Maria, in the women’s section, sank to her knees; Marsilio Ficino, among the canons, had tears coursing down his face. Lorenzo, however, strode to the high altar, ripped the bull from the hands of the archbishop and tore it in half.’
Hearing that he was about to be arrested, Pico, who had stayed so long in Rome that he had rubbed the patience of his secretary raw, suddenly had to leave.
‘Where to, my lord?’ Cristoforo asked, irritably. ‘My joints have rusted up but now you want me to gallop away on a horse. Where to?’
‘France.’
‘France?’
‘We’re not safe anywhere in Italy. If I can get to the Sorbonne, all will be well.’
‘You would be safe in Florence,’ I said.
‘Ah, but Florence is where they think I will go.’
True enough, no one bothered to pursue us when we finally left Rome. In Siena, however, we were watched, and when we left, we took the road to Florence, deviating later to a route leading to Lucca and the north.
It was noontide when we entered the gates of Lucca a few days later and the streets were almost deserted. We rested by a fountain while a servant went to find accommodation. When the servant returned, I thought he looked nervous.
‘The Signoria wish to make you welcome, my lord, and have invited you to the town hall.’
‘How come? I told you to reveal my identity to no one.’
I caught the servant by the throat and squeezed. ‘Who is with the Signoria? Who did you speak to?’
‘The papal nuncio,’ he gasped.
‘And you were not going to warn us?’
‘They threatened to kill me.’
I spat in his face.
Pico was angry with my behaviour – mine, not the servant’s – and, having told me to let the poor man go, rubbed his face wearily. ‘Is there no escape from this world?’
‘Very slowly, without any fuss, let us remount and make our way back to the gate,’ I said.
‘And what about this fellow?’
‘Abandon him,’ said Cristoforo.
‘Have I taught you nothing?’ Pico demanded. He told the servant to remount and not to worry, that he was forgiven.
But as we made our way down towards the city wall, the tocsin sounded for the closing of the gates. And then we spurred our horses and raced, bearing down on the bewildered guards like the horsemen of the Apocalypse, charging through them and over them before they could respond. We galloped out of Lucca and, avoiding the road to Pisa, fled into the mountains.
30
A GRAMMARIA
N WITH A DREAM
1487
FEELING SAFER ONCE WE WERE ACROSS THE APENNINES and in the Duchy of Ferrara we indulged in a short detour to Carpi. There lived two of Pico’s nephews – Alberto and Lionello Pio – whom he loved as sons. Another nephew was also there, Gianfrancesco Pico, who being nineteen was closer in age to his uncle than to his cousins. Pico was cooler with him than with the younger boys since Gianfrancesco was the son of a brother Pico detested; yet Gianfrancesco clearly worshipped his uncle and tried to impress him with tales of his achievements at university.
The tutor of the boys in Greek and Latin was forty-year-old Aldo Manuzio, an enthusiastic – some might say addicted – student of Greek. Having discovered that I was close to Poliziano, he greeted me jovially as if I were an old friend and made sure to sit beside me at dinner, telling me that he thought Poliziano was a Hercules among men, most learned, most fearless of all scholars. ‘He has reason where other men only have intuition or opinion.’
‘It is true,’ Pico agreed. Turning to his young nephews, he told them that Poliziano had read every book in the Medici library. Their eyes popped.
‘That,’ said Aldo, ‘must make him the best-read man in the world.’
‘He must know more than anybody,’ said Alberto Pio.
‘Except me,’ said Pico. When the boys hooted and accused him of vanity, Pico explained simply that he, too, had read all the Medici books and many more besides.
‘That is not vanity, it is the truth,’ Gianfrancesco agreed, staring angrily at the boys. ‘Our uncle is the most learned man in all Italy, perhaps the world.’
Aldo told me that his ambition was to become a printer- publisher, specialising in Greek texts. I told him that printing was the invention of the devil designed for the ruination of the world, and that his idea, if successful, would only condemn our beloved authors to the vulgar throng. ‘Beautiful ideas,’ I told him, ‘should be expressed in a beautiful hand, ideally a hand that belongs to a man who knows and loves the Greek language.’