Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose

“Not all that mad,” William said. “I had given him the ideas, taking them from your Declaration of Avignon, and from some pages of Olieu.”

“You?” Ubertino exclaimed, between amazement and joy. “But then you agree with me!”

William seemed embarrassed. “They were the right ideas for the Emperor, at that moment,” he said evasively.

Ubertino looked at him suspiciously. “Ah, but you don’t really believe them, do you?”

“Tell me,” William said, “tell me how you saved yourself from those dogs.”

“Ah, dogs indeed, William. Rabid dogs. I found myself even in conflict with Bonagratia, you know?”

“But Bonagratia is on our side!”

“Now he is, after I spoke at length with him. Then he was convinced, and he protested against the Ad conditorem canonum . And the Pope imprisoned him for a year.”

“I have heard he is now close to a friend of mine in the curia, William of Occam.”

“I knew him only slightly. I don’t like him. A man without fervor, all head, no heart.”

“But the head is beautiful.”

“Perhaps, and it will take him to hell.”

“Then I will see him again down there, and we will argue logic.”

“Hush, William,” Ubertino said, smiling with deep affection, “you are better than your philosophers. If only you had wanted …”

“What?”

“When we saw each other the last time in Umbria — remember? — I had just been cured of my ailments through the intercession of that marvelous woman … Clare of Montefalco …” he murmured, his face radiant. “Clare … When female nature, naturally so perverse, becomes sublime through holiness, then it can be the noblest vehicle of grace. You know how my life has been inspired by the purest chastity, William” — he grasped my master’s arm, convulsively — “you know with what … fierce — yes, that’s the word — with what fierce thirst for penance I have tried to mortify in myself the throbbing of the flesh, and make myself wholly transparent to the love of Jesus Crucified… And yet, three women in my life have been three celestial messengers for me. Angela of Foligno, Margaret of Citta di Castello (who revealed the end of my book to me when I had written only a third of it), and finally Clare of Montefalco. It was a reward from heaven that I, yes, I, should investigate her miracles and proclaim her sainthood to the crowds, before Holy Mother Church moved. And you were there, William, and you could have helped me in that holy endeavor, and you would not — ”

“But the holy endeavor that you invited me to share was sending Bentivenga, Jacomo, and Giovannuccio to the stake,” William said softly.

“They were besmirching her memory with their perversions. And you were an inquisitor!”

“And that was precisely why I asked to be relieved of that position. I did not like the business. Nor did I like — I shall be frank — the way you induced Bentivenga to confess his errors. You pretended you wished to enter his sect, if sect it was; you stole his secrets from him, and you had him arrested.”

“But that is the way to proceed against the enemies of Christ! They were heretics, they were Pseudo Apostles, they reeked of the sulphur of Fra Dolcino!”

“They were Clare’s friends.”

“No, William, you must not cast even the hint of a shadow on Clare’s memory.”

“But they were associated with her.”

“They were Minorites, they called themselves Spirituals, and instead they were monks of the community! But you know it emerged clearly at the trial that Bentivenga of Gubbio proclaimed himself an apostle, and then he and Giovannuccio of Bevagna seduced nuns, telling them hell does not exist, that carnal desires can be satisfied without offending God, that the body of Christ (Lord, forgive me!) can be received after a man has lain with a nun, that the Magdalen found more favor in the Lord’s sight than the virgin Agnes, that what the vulgar call the Devil is God Himself, because the Devil is knowledge and God is by definition knowledge! And it was the blessed Clare, after hearing this talk, who had the vision in which God Himself told her they were wicked followers of the Spiritus Libertatis!”

“They were Minorites whose minds were aflame with the same visions as Clare’s, and often the step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is very brief,” William said.

Ubertino wrung his hands and his eyes were again veiled with tears. “Don’t say that, William. How can you confound the moment of ecstatic love, which burns the viscera with the perfume of incense, and the disorder of the senses, which reeks of sulphur? Bentivenga urged others to touch a body’s naked limbs; he declared this was the only way to freedom from the dominion of the senses, homo nudus cum nuda iacebat, ‘naked they lay together, man and woman…’ ”

“Et non commiscebantur ad invicem, but there was no conjunction.”

“Lies! They were seeking pleasure, and they found it. If carnal stimulus was felt, they did not consider it a sin if, to satisfy it, man and woman lay together, and the one touched and kissed the other in every part, and naked belly was joined to naked belly!”

I confess. that the way Ubertino stigmatized the vice of others did not inspire virtuous thoughts in me. My master must have realized I was agitated, and he interrupted the holy man.

“Yours is an ardent spirit, Ubertino, both in love of God and in hatred of evil. What I meant is that there is little difference between the ardor of the seraphim and the ardor of Lucifer, because they are always born from an extreme igniting of the will.”

“Oh, there is a difference, and I know it!” Ubertino said, inspired. “You mean that between desiring good and desiring evil there is a brief step, because it is always a matter of directing the will. This is true. But the difference lies in the object, and the object is clearly recognizable. God on this side, the Devil on that.”

“And I fear I no longer know how to distinguish, Ubertino. Wasn’t it your Angela of Foligno who told of that day when her spirit was transported and she found herself in the sepulcher of Christ? Didn’t she tell how first she kissed his breast and saw him lying with his eyes closed, then she kissed his mouth, and there rose from those lips an ineffable sweetness, and after a brief pause she lay her cheek against the cheek of Christ and Christ put his hand to her cheek and pressed her to him and — as she said — her happiness became sublime? …”

“What does this have to do with the urge of the senses?” Ubertino asked. “It was a mystical experience, and the body was our Lord’s.”

“Perhaps I am accustomed to Oxford,” William said, “where even mystical experience was of another sort…”

“All in the head.” Ubertino smiled.

“Or in the eyes. God perceived as light, in the rays of the sun, the images of mirrors, the diffusion of colors over the parts of ordered matter, in the reflections of daylight on wet leaves … Isn’t this love closer to Francis’s when he praises God in His creatures, flowers, grass, water, air? I don’t believe this type of love can produce any snare. Whereas I’m suspicious of a love that transmutes into a colloquy with the Almighty the shudders felt in fleshly contacts…”

“You blaspheme, William! It is not the same thing. There is an immense abyss between the high ecstasy of the heart loving Christ Crucified and the base, corrupt ecstasy of the Pseudo Apostles of Montefalco…”

“They were not Pseudo Apostles, they were Brothers of the Free Spirit; you said as much yourself.”

“What difference is there? You haven’t heard everything about that trial, I myself never dared record certain confessions, for fear of casting, if only for a moment, the shadow of the Devil on the atmosphere of sanctity Clare had created in that place. But I learned certain things, certain things, William! They gathered at night in a cellar, they took a newborn boy, they threw him from one to another until he died, of blows … or other causes… And he who caught him alive for the last time, and held him as he died, became the leader of the sect… And the child’s body was torn to pieces and mixed with flour, to make blasphemous hosts!” “Ubertino,” William said firmly, “these things were said, many centuries ago, by the Armenian bishops, about the sect of the Paulicians. And about the Bogomils.”