by Linda Proud
Every now and again, a creak of wood as someone shifted, a cough echoing in the vaulted ceiling, a muttering of irritation as the man reading Jerome, wanting to get out to relieve himself, had to disturb those reading Augustine and Clement. A rattle of chains and a thud as a book was taken out from the shelf below and placed on its desk. A sigh, a sneeze – a great choof! that blew the dust off a copy of some ancient work of jurisprudence.
I had chosen my seat at random, not bothering to read the list of titles that were inscribed on a board hanging from a hook at the bench-end. Drawing a volume out from the shelf, placing it on the desk and opening its cover, I found it was a copy of Plato, inscribed on the fly-leaf and in his own handwriting ‘From Cosimo’. Cosimo, our guiding spirit in death as in life. He had built this monastery and this library not to redeem his sins, as many thought, but out of devotion to God, to learning, to truth.
Knowing Plato off by heart, I put the book back and drew out another. It was a comparatively new work, beautifully bound in a soft leather that made no noise when I placed it on the desk. Opening the cover, I looked into a jewel casket: Marsilio Ficino’s translations of Pythagoras and Hermes Trismegistus. Opposite the first page was a design of circles, the one in the centre announcing that here, in the little circles arranged round its circumference, were the titles of what was to be found within, and all the circles brought into one design by exquisite filigree patterns in which little scrolls appeared bearing Lorenzo’s motto: SEMPER. Always. On the opposite page, the knotwork in the margins and a delicately coloured and gilded capital framed the most exquisite penmanship I had ever seen. Its perfection pulled my heart open and emptied it of its pride. Even if I had not suffered any injury to my arm, even if I had worked for ten hours each day practising my craft, I could never have achieved this. Bartolommeo Sanvito, I was certain, the scribe who was to me as Leonardo was to Filippino: a very thorn in the soul. Beauty shone out of the book. Such a book would never suffer neglect. It had been designed to last forever – semper, always – to be kept as a treasure in times of ignorance until the day when, once more, men could read therein and find a beauty deeper, richer still: the beauty of ideas.
I turned the pages carefully, reverentially, until I came to the Poimandres and settled to reading.
‘Davvero!’ said a voice close to my ear. I jumped, startled, and turned expecting to see a severe face beneath a black cowl, but it was only Pico, smiling.
‘You frightened me,’ I whispered.
‘Reading Hermes! Do you want to burn? Come, there is a meeting in the refectory.’
I rose and followed him, going not out of the public door but the one leading into the monastery. ‘I want to debate astrology with Fra Girolamo,’ Pico told me as he went nimbly down the stairs. I glanced over my shoulder at a large, sweet painting of the Annunciation. ‘Come on, you can look at that later. He considers astrology to be superstition and wants to rid the city of augurs, fortune-tellers, crystal-gazers and soothsayers. I agree with him about the charlatans, but there is more to astrology than fortune- telling and we need to understand it before we condemn it. If indeed we do condemn it. Was it not a star that led the Magi to the infant Christ?’
His grey eyes, with a new softness to them since he had been absolved of heresy by Pope Alexander, gazed at me affectionately. Here was a man advanced in the process of cleansing his soul. I am not sure why I found this uncomfortable, since I was in the tentative process of cleansing my own. Perhaps I just preferred Giovanni Pico in his days of daring and adventure, preferred flamboyance to quietness, colour to black.
In the refectory, the invited company was dining at a frugal table. I had heard it called ‘the academy of the despairing’ but found a group of optimistic men more concerned with power than with self-understanding. It was strange to see men of the Vespucci, Ridolfi and Strozzi families eating hard bread and even harder cheese. But strangest of all was to see Piero de’ Medici among them, at one with the academicians and the friars. While everyone appeared to be listening to the Friar’s disquisition on sacred music, their senses were trained on the young Medici. He only had to twitch and all heads turned. Piero himself attended to everything Savonarola had to say and asked good questions. Intelligence shone in him, but it was as light shining through inferior alabaster. Piero had inherited the nature of his mother rather than of his father, and so, though he asked good questions, he seemed disdainful, and each man in the group was of the belief that, to survive, he had to ingratiate himself with this prince. I say ‘prince’ advisedly, for Piero was nothing less. The Medici bank and its business interests he left to others while he enjoyed the life of a young royal. His father’s injunction, that he should never forget he was a citizen, had indeed been forgotten.
It was so different from one of Lorenzo’s gatherings, in which each man had felt free to speak and to hold his own opinions; here a subtle atmosphere of fear pervaded everything, as if no one in this academy dared do anything but agree. Certainly, since the letter had come from Pope Alexander, permitting the independence of San Marco from the Lombard Congregation, Savonarola had an even greater air of confidence and power. I’d heard that the Pope had been browbeaten into agreeing, worn down by very weariness at the interminable arguments for and against, but you would think here it had been a simple decision and a wise one. Although he was now Vicar General of his own Congregation, Savonarola was vested in the same white habit and rope girdle as his two companions, Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro. His authority was in himself and not in any robe of office.
Soon after I arrived, the conversation turned to the subject of Angelo Poliziano. Fra Silvestro asked Pico if he had invited him to the academy yet.
‘It would be better if you did not,’ said Bartolommeo Scala quickly. ‘No offence to you, Count, but your friend has become rabid and attacks fellow scholars for no good reason.’
‘Oh, I have no doubt they deserve it,’ said Savonarola quietly. ‘It is dogs that become rabid, not professors. I believe the Greek scholars are jealous. It often seems to me that the closest thing to a battlefield is a university. Indeed, the only difference is that soldiers fight cleanly and according to rules.’
The company laughed.
‘Angelo Poliziano is the most learned man in the country,’ Savonarola continued, ‘and it would serve us to honour him rather than denigrate him, for everything he has done and is doing is on behalf of mankind.’
Scala looked taken aback. ‘I am sure you are right, Frate, and may God forgive me for my rash opinion.’
Savonarola was thoughtful, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth. The rest of the company waited on him. He remained quiet, pondering the subject of Angelo Poliziano. ‘He is a fine man,’ he said at last, ‘but his soul is in mortal danger. He believes with Aristotle that God is in all created things, and therefore Poliziano loves only created things and binds himself to the earth.’ Slowly his eyes raised up and met mine. ‘Well, Tommaso Maffei? What may we do to save the soul of your friend and master?’
Everyone was staring at me. ‘I… well… I… is it in danger? He has more virtue than most men I know, and if a man be measured by the company he keeps, Poliziano keeps the very finest. If he cannot love God directly, it’s because he cannot see Him, so he loves His reflection in others. Surely God would not be so unjust as to damn him for that?’
‘We may not presume to judge on God’s behalf,’ said Fra Silvestro, a man as stern and humourless as an old Roman senator. ‘Poliziano needs to get down on his knees and surrender his pride to the Lord.’
‘Poets are corroded by vanity – they cannot help it,’ Savonarola agreed. ‘They feed on praise – birds of praise…’
The company laughed.
‘You see them applaud themselves when their poems are read; they can’t restrain themselves, their mouths agape with self- congratulation. I have never seen any man as proud as one fellow I heard reciting a poem o
n the worthlessness of fame. Such men can hardly be healed since they do not realise that they are sick. But if they are not summoned from within by the Holy Spirit, or seek to rid themselves of pride, then pride will begin to nibble away at them.’
What right had Scala to look so smug at that? He who suffered pride more than most?
‘Poliziano does pray, Frate,’ said Pico.
‘Yes, but to which gods?’
‘He has recently written two hymns to the Virgin Mary,’ I said.
Savonarola was surprised. ‘Vero? I had no idea. Could we hear them?’
‘I do not have them by heart, but they are most lovely.’
‘I meant, hear them from him. Why does he spurn us?’
I glanced at Piero de’ Medici, since he knew the reason as well as I, but he was feeding a hound under the table and stroking its muzzle.
‘I do not know, Frate,’ I said.
‘Go to your master and tell him that the unity of this city depends on him, on his joining us here along with his dear friend, the Count of Concordia.’
I glanced at Pico. He nodded in agreement. ‘Angelo should be here.’
Repelled by the taut air of obsequiousness infecting the academy of San Marco, I left as soon as I decently could, crossed the square to the sculpture garden and sought out Michelangelo, who, as I expected to find, was working late.
‘I fear the future, Tommaso,’ he told me. ‘There is a great wave of disaster heading for us, and we do not need Savonarola to predict it. You can feel it in your blood.’
Ever since the Prior of Santo Spirito had given Michelangelo a room in the church where he could dissect human bodies, his workshop had become littered with sketches of flayed corpses, skin and muscle pulled back to reveal to us the secrets of anatomy. Such was Michelangelo’s dedication to his art that he made these dissections and did the drawings even while his stomach rebelled. He was skinny now for lack of food, but still he drew his corpses. All around him, all around me, was incontrovertible evidence of our mortality. I sighed. ‘In the Academy we discuss transmigration of souls. Cardiere tells us that he has met Lorenzo after death. But still I doubt. What are we, in the end, but a pump and bellows in a body of meat?’
Michelangelo found one of his studies and forced me to look at it. It showed the organs inside the ribcage of a young Spaniard. ‘He was a beautiful youth,’ he said, ‘but it was not beauty I found inside him so much as wonder. It is clear to me that the Creator of Man is a God of supreme intelligence. The more I look into dead bodies, the less I fear death, for whoever made them made me, and it is His Will whether I live or die, or what happens next.’
‘Tell me, do you find Savonarola a good and true man?’ Michelangelo put down his tools to give me his full attention.
‘He is the freezing water we all need to wake up. Whatever his faults and shortcomings – and he has them, of course – his courage, his enthusiasm, are making a difference. We cannot call ourselves Christians if we do not live a Christian life – Fra Girolamo is showing us how.’ He sighed and shook the hair out of his eyes, eyes that were less defensive these days and more mellow. ‘I wake up every morning and thank God for him.’
73
WHAT HAPPENED TO MARIA?
1493
TRUST YOU TO ASK THAT QUESTION. FOR A MONK WHO, SO far as I know, remains celibate, you have a soft and feminine heart, Erasmo. Am I not allowed to lose my story in a blather of information about governments, monasteries and printing houses? For this, after all, is what I tried to do at the time. Where was Maria? Still with her brother, although I had not seen her since Lorenzo’s funeral, when I grew so hot and tongue-tied that I soon moved away to bury myself in a group of men. And then there was another occasion, at the end of summer the following year.
As I said, I had declined Poliziano’s offer to live with him at the Villa Bruscoli, preferring to stay in my own house in the city. Its atmosphere of grief was fitting for the time and did not distress me as previously. I lay in my marriage bed and my loss of Lorenzo mingled with my loss of Elena, became one grief. I groaned in my loneliness and prayed to God that he take me, for too much light had gone out from life. Sucked down by melancholy, I had no hope in this new world dawning. We were under the rule of a boy and Savonarola was promising us a scourging. My dreams became infested with devils, little pointy-toothed, malicious imps who wanted my soul in hell.
Maria? Yes, yes, I’m coming to that.
In September, Angelo called me to the Villa Bruscoli, ‘on a matter of unfinished business’. When I arrived I found Maria in the garden, weeping over a dead toad. Such tears had not been caused by the toad, merely released by this tiny tragedy. She cried for all dead things. I put my arms around her instinctively and, to my surprise, she responded, burying herself into me and hugging me as if she hugged life itself. I came so close that I touched her mouth with my breath, and hovered there.
Something stirred within me. No, not that, you reprobate! If it had been that, the way would have been clearer, for nothing hastens us into marriage quicker than desire. No, that which stirred was my heart. And I was frightened. Happiness would only lead to loss. The words of the Greek gipsy tolled liked a bell: All whom you love will die before you.
I stepped back from her hastily. Laughed. Apologised. Asked, ‘Where is your brother?’
I knew why Angelo wanted to see me. He wanted to fulfil Lorenzo’s wishes regarding his sister.
‘Was he expecting you?’ Looking baffled, she told me that Angelo was with Pico. ‘He will be back soon. I don’t know why he went off if he asked you to come.’
I knew.
‘I will go to Pico’s,’ I said, and went along the path through the garden that led up to the estate of Pico della Mirandola on the terrace above. In the chestnut wood I circled back on another path and returned to the city, where I threw myself into the urgent work of publishing Savonarola’s tracts.
Italy
Mont Cenis, August 15th, 1506.
Of all the routes into Italy, the one from Lyons to Turin via Mont Cenis is the least dramatic but the most beautiful. I would surrender the awful majesty of the Brenner Pass for this drovers’ track any day. In the heights it is still spring. Having left August back in the hot valleys of Provence, the higher we ascend, the further we go back in time until, in the upper meadows, we are riding through swathes of June flowers. If we were to go higher still, so we are told, we might see the wonder of purple and silver anemones that will not suffer to be picked but must be admired on the spot, but that would be a detour for the curious only. Our route south lies across these upland meadows, where the mist is damp and the moorland bleak.
Today we met a shepherd in passing, the bells of his sheep clonking cheerfully. When he greeted us in the dialect of Piedmont, my eyes filled with tears for, despite all its strangeness, it is a dialect founded on Italian grammar. Erasmus chided me, saying that if this easy tearfulness is an Italian trait then he must turn on his heel and run for Holland. But he was close to tears himself, he whose dream is now on the very threshold of its realisation.
Love begins to throb like the return of life after numbness, love of my country and people, an unrequited love of which its object is oblivious. What makes an Italian Italian and not French? We look different, we speak differently, we feel differently. We are more hot- tempered. I thought it was in the blood, but is it in the air? Why was it that, as we crossed from Savoy into Piedmont, Clyfton began to shout at his pupils? Oh, I know the reason well enough: our flamboyant royal courier began speaking Tuscan as soon as he stepped on Italian soil, and this irritated the tutor who insists Latin must be spoken at all times. Erasmus tried to intervene, and remonstrated with the tutor, who was telling the boys that Italian is a vulgar tongue of many dialects not to be imitated.
‘That is not the case!’ Erasmus said sternly. ‘Tuscan is commonly understood throughout the land. It is t
he language of Petrarch and Dante, of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Angelo Poliziano. It is the language of their fathers, and the boys need to learn it.’
‘Not from this heraldic woodcock. He is not Italian. He is a walking Babel Tower.’
At which the offended courier began to push the angry tutor quite roughly.
We each carry a dagger as a protection against thieves but now one of them came out for use within our party. You hear stories of handsome men who suddenly reveal themselves as ugly demons; well, here was one such transformation. The light in Clyfton’s eye was quite murderous as he drew his knife and lunged towards the courier. With an energy and speed I seem only to possess when weapons are drawn, I caught his wrist and twisted it hard till he yowled and dropped the blade.
‘You pumpkin!’ he snarled at me in English.
Erasmus advanced upon us to calm things down.
‘As for you, you windbag,’ Clyfton shouted, still in English, ‘these boys are as much in your care as mine, but all you do is tell them stories. Do you think your relentless erudition is enough to educate them? While you three are taking supper and complaining about inns, I am teaching them grammar. You are all utterly inflated with ideas and theories, blind to what is under your nose. You talk – you preach – about learning, about philosophy, about knowledge, about virtue. But what do you practise?’
The ugly demon had undergone another stark transformation, this time into the vengeful angel of the Lord, for what he said was true. Lashed and abashed, we apologised to each other, and to our charges, and continued our journey. Despite these courteous formalities, however, Erasmus was in a furious mood and rode alone behind the party. Then, as the mist cleared and we looked down on the city of Turin, Erasmus rode up to join us. Tomorrow we begin the slow descent into Italy and the return to high summer.