by Linda Proud
I had never heard him speak so urgently and forcefully. In that moment, the choice seemed easy: I believed everything he said. More, I knew it to be true from my own experience. But a sneaking nervousness at condemning the Christ-like Savonarola kept me quiet. What if Ficino were wrong? He understood my hesitation.
‘If all creatures are in essence divine, that includes Girolamo Savonarola, whether he be the antichrist or no. Serve the essence, not the man.’
‘What do I do? Go back and denounce him?’
‘Not if you want to live. I dined with Poliziano and Pico a week before Angelo was taken ill, sharing the harvest of their vineyards. The French were at the city gates but up on Fiesole we were laughing about it, happy and elevated. There was no shadow on that evening, no foreboding, no malign messages in the stars. Angelo and Pico were both anxious that I decide whose wine was best, and we got a little drunk in the contest. Any quarrel I’d had with Pico in the past was forgotten. There was work to be done, great work, and together we were going to synthesise Plato, Aristotle and Christianity into one great teaching. So, the French were coming and the French would go. We had nothing to fear, for we were children of God. That was how it felt, that lovely September night. A fortnight later, Angelo was dead; eight weeks later, so was Pico. Thirty-two years old! Let us speak of it, Tommaso. The death of these two friends, these two great, very great men: were they not suspicious?’
I hung my head. The death and burials of Poliziano and Pico were facts so uncomfortable that I rarely dared think about them.
‘Such untimely deaths, and so close to each other. At that dinner, Pico told us that it was his intention to divest himself of all worldly goods, but he said nothing about entering the Dominican Order. He was going to take to the road, he said, a pilgrim, a mendicant, to throw himself as a feather on the breath of God. You know what Pico was like: once he had an idea, no matter how insane it was, he was going to do it. I fully believed what he told me: he was going to take to the road. He had already given his titles and goods away.’
‘Do you know who to?’
‘Yes. He left everything to his brother, Antonmaria.’
‘Not to Gianfrancesco?’
‘No, nothing. He had no time for Gianfrancesco. You must have known that. “One of God’s sycophants” he called him.’
‘Why has Antonmaria not claimed his inheritance? The books are still in San Marco.’
‘Too busy fighting wars and not very interested, I should think, other than in their monetary value.’
‘Gianfrancesco has spent these past months editing the papers, making everything ready for publication. And he has been working closely with Savonarola to complete Pico’s refutation of astrology.’
Ficino blanched. ‘What are they doing? What ideas are they putting to his name? This must be stopped at once!’
‘How could we possibly stop it?’
‘You must write to Antonmaria.’
‘And consign Pico’s works to oblivion? Better they are published, surely, in whatever form.’
Ficino told me to copy everything I could from the original documents. ‘The friars tell us that Pico and Poliziano died Dominicans,’ he said, ‘but is it true?’
‘No, of course it is not true. If Angelo did convert, it was in delirium. I don’t know. I was kept from him. But I was with Pico, and he died a Cabalist. Both corpses were dressed in Dominican habits, which I myself removed in the night so as to clothe them in their own apparel. They lie together in their finery; that is the best that can be said.’
‘What if they died, were killed to propagate the faith?’
I leapt from my chair, sprung by words being said out loud that I had only dared think in my darkest moments. Ficino rose and took my hands in his. ‘I believe our friends were about to denounce the friar, and that is why they were killed.’
I shook my head, trying to clear it. ‘How could that be possible? If a man has convinced himself that he is God’s prophet, that makes him less, not more likely to commit murder.’
‘But as you say, the men around him are strange, and might be moved to commit sin for what they believe to be the greater good.’
‘The manuscripts Angelo was working on when he died have gone missing, stolen I think. Maria said a friar took them for safe- keeping, but they’re not in the library. I’ve searched it thoroughly.’
‘Manuscripts of what, Tommaso?’
‘He was working on a revision of his Account of the Pazzi Conspiracy; there were some letters he was collating for publication; and the second miscellany, ending with an entry on pygmies.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and then I began to tremble. ‘There was something. I noticed a fresh work fastened to his desk but did not read it. It was about the antichrist!’
‘As I thought. Autumn, 1494. The moment was precarious. The French were at our gates. Piero de’ Medici, as I remember, had succeeded in his negotiations, but it was put abroad that he had failed and a second deputation was sent to the camp. When Savonarola returned, he was feted as a hero. If Pico and Poliziano had chosen that moment to speak out, we would still be ruled by the Medici.’
‘Many would say that would be an evil.’
‘They would be wrong. There was much left to be desired in the days of the Medici, not least many of our republican freedoms, but what we did have was the freedom of thought, opinion and belief, and that is the greater freedom. The last time the Platonic Academy was closed it was by Justinian, a Christian emperor as straight in his religion as Savonarola is in his. If you look over history, you will see that philosophy flourishes in times of decadence and goes underground in times of strict, enforced theology. Strict theology, the interpretation of bigoted and arrogant men, is a tyrant deaf to anyone’s truth but its own. That is the religion that puts non-believers to the stake. Theology and Philosophy are sisters. When they run freely hand-in-hand, no one is killed for his beliefs.’ Ficino stood up and thanked me for helping him to see the matter clearly. ‘I am now convinced,’ he said, ‘that Savonarola is the antichrist. Tommaso, you must leave San Marco.’
‘How? I am in the Order. And the books – I cannot leave the books!’ I tried to evade his gaze, my eyes moving now left, now right, but wherever they moved Ficino placed himself in the way of my sight. ‘Leave,’ he repeated, fixing my gaze with his.
‘The books…’
‘The books have their own fate, and you have yours.’
‘Yes, indeed I have, if it is to be a runaway friar!’
‘Go to the Pope and have your vows annulled.’
Pope Alexander? The Borgia pope? Here I laughed out loud at the enormity of the suggestion. ‘Now he is the antichrist!’
‘There can be more than one. Indeed, we all have the antichrist within us, as much as we have the Christ, but we do not all presume to stand up and speak on behalf of God. Listen to me. We may not see each other again. The Platonic Academy will not outlive me, at least not for long. Listen. Tommaso, concentrate. I want you to go north and take what you know of Plato to those who know nothing. Be an apostle of philosophy. Free yourself of these vows. Whatever authority you acted under, I am superseding it. Do as I say. Tommaso Maffei, for once in your life, do as I say, and leave.’
94
SARZI
1497
WHEN I RETURNED TO THE MONASTERY, I FOUND Savonarola preaching to a group of women, telling them how to be good wives and live the Christian life. I stared at him across the cloisters: there was nothing on him, no mark of the antichrist at all. And yet, if I were to go to him and tell him that the kingdom of heaven is here, now, he would have risen in wrath and shouted at me. I went to my cell, locked the door and fell into a torment of thought as to what I should do. Succeeding in nothing but giving myself a headache, I returned to my work collating the papers of Poliziano ready for publication. After the
steadiness of work had calmed me down, it occurred to me that, once finished, I could contrive to take the collection to Venice myself – and then not return. Simple! I resolved to get the work done as quickly as I could. It would take a fortnight perhaps, or a month – no more – to finish. Then I would do as I had been told to do and quit Florence.
A quiet knock on my door made me jump. ‘Fra Tommaso? It is me, Alessandro.’
‘It is I, not me,’ I thought going to the door and turning the key. For one who called himself an editor, Alessandro Sarzi had a weak grasp of grammar. Sarzi – a man so oily you could have made an everlasting torch of him. I ushered him in.
He was a Bolognese who worked with a printer of Bologna who had the gall to rename himself ‘Platone’. Sarzi had first sought me out not long after Poliziano’s death, asking for any Italian work not yet published. Although I disliked the man on sight, I gave him several pieces for Platone to print. After that, he has been assiduous in his help in finding copies of Poliziano’s work around the city.
He sat down in my only chair and looked about my cell with tremendous satisfaction. ‘How is the work? Is it done yet?’
‘Not quite.’
‘I have had a letter from Aldo Manuzio. He is keen and willing to publish the complete works, the Opera Omnia of Angelo Poliziano. Wonderful news, eh?’
I was swallowing bile, a bitter, acrid lump of pride that would not quite go down. ‘Why – why you?’ I managed.
‘Because I suggested it. There’s no point in collecting everything together and then sitting on it. It must be published.’
‘I know! I was about to… I was going to write to Aldo.’
‘Well, I have done it for you. And I’ve offered to be its editor.’
I was the editor. By all that was holy and true, I had to be the editor. But I was a friar… ‘Oh,’ I said.
He picked up the stack of finished papers and began to look through it. ‘Did you find the Account of the Pazzi conspiracy?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘The second Miscellanea?’
‘No.’
‘That is a tragedy, a tragedy.’ He made a great intake of breath. ‘Keep looking, Fra Tommaso, and send anything to me in Venice that you find.’
‘When are you going?’
‘Next week.’
‘I need a fortnight.’
‘You have a week.’
I had been making a copy of everything I had found. I carried on with the work until it was time for Sarzi to leave Florence but had to let a few things go without making a copy. I packed them in a chest with dread and prayed God they would arrive safely.
To watch the chests being carried away was to experience Angelo’s death all over again. There was a great hole in my life, with nothing to do other than my given duties. Ficino’s instruction sat on me like a hair shirt, but I steeled myself to ignore it. I had made a vow to Cardinal Giovanni to protect the Medici books and I must stay. Had God himself not sent a sign in Alessandro Sarzi? I was not meant to go to Venice.
I repaired my relations with Gianfrancesco and offered to help him in his collation of Pico’s works, which he, somewhat overwhelmed by his chosen task, accepted. When I told him that Sarzi had taken Poliziano’s works to Venice to be published by Aldo, he warned me to be careful of him. ‘When I was in Bologna last, I came across a book of Poliziano’s Italian verses printed by Platone.’
‘Yes, I gave the manuscript to Sarzi myself.’
‘Well, I knew them for Poliziano’s verses, and perhaps other men will recognise them as such, but the name on the frontispiece was “Alessandro Sarzi”.’
That should have served to release the arrow from the bow; that should have sent me out of the monastery and to Venice in pursuit of the thief, with or without permission. Why did it not? Because I convinced myself that a letter to Aldo would suffice, warning him not to allow Sarzi near Poliziano’s Opera Omnia in any capacity, editorial or otherwise.
The reply, when it came, said that Sarzi was proof-reading, nothing more. But I heard other things over the following year from friends of Poliziano, who were being asked to rewrite the letters they had written to him, ‘for the cause of the refinement of style’. Each of them said they had been contacted by Alessandro Sarzi, the editor of Poliziano’s works.
Now I trusted no one. Working with Gianfrancesco, I found he was leaving out of his collation anything to do with magic and Cabala. My new work became the rescue of the full works of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. I stored the copies in the library of San Marco for posterity.
The books of Poliziano and Pico were duly published in the following years. Neither deserved the name Opera Omnia. But most of the works that survived those two great scholars do still exist; copies have been made of my copies and are in circulation, amassing ready for future editions put together, I can only hope, by men more faithful to the authors.
95
SAVONAROLA IS ATTACKED
1497
GOING TO OGNISSANTI ONE EVENING TO COLLECT A BOOK from the Palazzo Vespucci, I called in at Botticelli’s workshop. At the front were various images of the Madonna and saints and a smell of incense hung on the air. I crossed the shop, empty but for a dozing apprentice, thinking that Sandro must have succumbed to his brother’s urgings and become a Piagnone. Hearing voices in the back room, I opened the door – and stopped dead. About twelve young men were variously draped on settles and benches, drinking Sandro’s best wine. They looked as thunderstruck as I did, but recovered quicker.
‘Get out, you dog!’ shouted Doffo Spini, his face screwed with rage. The young man next to him, one of the Ridolfi, picked up a jar of yellow pigment and flung its contents at me. They all crowed with laughter and within moments I was daubed with every colour of Sandro’s palette.
‘Paint the dog! Paint the dog! Put some colour in his cheeks, Doffo!’
I was too weak from our continual fasting in the monastery to resist them and mewed like a kitten.
Botticelli shouted at them to stop and bundled me out of the room. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he said, taking me to the well.
Only now did I find my voice. ‘You, you who would rather draw images of paradise than earn a living, you of all men, to keep such evil company!’
‘I’m so sorry.’ He did what he could to wash me down but it was hopeless. ‘I’ll lend you my mantle. It will get you back to the monastery. And keep you warm. Tommaso, you are so cold and thin.’
‘It’s you I’m worried about, not me. Please tell me why you allow Doffo Spini near you.’
‘I’ve known him since he was a child!’
‘Then you know he is evil.’
Sandro looked at me severely. ‘You are beginning to sound like a Dominican, but I know you for a Platonist who believes that goodness is the essence of all men. Yes, in Doffo it is overcome by evil, and he reacts to goodness with evil. When my brother lectures him, it makes him worse. Just the presence of the Friar in the city makes him worse. So how do you make him better? By giving him a drink and letting him prattle.’
I looked at him doubtfully.
‘Very well, it may not work, but at least I know what he is planning, where you do not.’
Now I looked at him with interest. ‘What is he planning?’
‘There is a conspiracy to assassinate Savonarola.’
‘By the Compagnacci?’
‘No, by others, but Doffo knows all about it, the when and the where of it, and the Compagnacci are going to create the necessary turbulence. It is what they are good at, after all. Doffo does not care whether Savonarola lives or dies: what he wants is rid of him.’
‘Who is behind all this, Sandro?’
‘Rome.’
‘Rome?’
‘The Pope, The Duke of Milan – and the Florentines, raw with austerity, will shout for Barabbas when it co
mes to it. Doffo’s only a puppet. Now, if you will allow it, I must return to my companions and somehow explain how it is that I have a friend among the Dominicans. Perhaps I shall tell them that you were planted in the monastery as a spy. What of that?’
I blinked rapidly.
‘Painters have eyes,’ he said, widening his own to stare into mine as he cleaned off my face with a wet rag. ‘Do you think I am stupid? Those books on the bonfire: they had as much value as my Venus. True?’
He went back inside to fetch his mantle. I looked round the yard where once I had posed for the figure of Mercury. It all seemed so long ago, that age when the gods lived with us. Now there was but one God. I looked up at the sky and ached with the sense of loss. Botticelli came out and threw his mantle around my shoulders.
‘You don’t understand me and I don’t understand you. Where did my lovely young Mercury go?’
‘He died, Sandro. He died twice. Once with his wife, then again with Lorenzo.’
Sandro kissed me on the cheek. ‘Resurrect. Be your own man. What did Virgil say to Dante? I crown and mitre thee lord of thyself.’ With that he pulled the hood over my head and slapped me on the back.
In the old days, the Signoria – elected every two months – had always comprised Medici men. Savonarola did not stoop to such corruption but wanted the people to be free to elect whom they chose. They chose Barabbas. When it came to the next election, enough of these outwardly pious Florentines dropped a bean in the bag of self-interest for the new Signoria to be composed of men of the old and powerful families – the Arrabbiati. These were not men to go to San Marco on their knees to kiss Savonarola on the hand. Instead, they banned him from preaching. Faced with the choice of disobeying the government or obeying God, Savonarola announced that he intended to preach at the Duomo on the eve of Ascension Day. I told Fra Silvestro what I had heard from Botticelli but he said I was not to allow fear into my heart. ‘The hour of our passing is for the Lord to choose.’ No one I spoke to was concerned about the Compagnacci; they were minor demons compared to the devil that was Pope Alexander. But when Savonarola went to the Duomo, he was accompanied by almost all the brethren of San Marco and those of us who were left behind were told we were to protect the monastery.