Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

‘So this monk was right.’

‘In one sense, yes. Except that I cannot help thinking that the money collected in such a questionable fashion goes towards the completion of the Basilica of St Peter, and that part of it is devoted not to banquets but to the noblest creations of the human spirit. Hundreds of writers and artists are producing masterpieces in Rome before which the Ancients would turn pale with envy. A world is in the process of being reborn, with a new vision, a new ambition, a new beauty. It is being reborn here, now, in corrupt, venal and impious Rome, with money wrested from the Germans. Is that not a very useful sort of waste?’

I no longer knew what to think. Good and Bad, truth and untruth, beauty and rottenness were so muddled up in my mind! But perhaps that was it, the Rome of Leo X, the Rome of Leo the African. I repeated Guicciardini’s formulations out loud, in order to engrave them upon my memory:

‘Idle city… holy city… eternal city…’

He interrupted me in a voice grown suddenly despondent:

‘Accursed city as well.’

While I gazed at him, awaiting some explanation, he took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket.

‘I have just copied out some lines written by Luther to our Pope.’

He read in a low voice:

‘You, Leo, the most ill-fated of all, you are seated upon the most dangerous of thrones. Rome was formerly a gate of Heaven; it is now the gaping abyss of Hell.’

927 A.H.

13 December 1520 — 30 November 1521

What a Saturday of happiness in my life was 6 April of that year! However, the Pope was angry. He thundered so loudly that I stayed motionless for a long moment in the antechamber, protected from his shouts by the heavy carved double doors. But the Swiss who accompanied me had his orders. He opened the door of the study without knocking, almost pushed me into the room and closed the door firmly behind me.

When he saw me, the Pope stopped shouting. But his eyebrows remained knitted together and his lower lip was still trembling. He indicated that I should come nearer with a signal from his smooth fingers, which were drumming feverishly on the table. I leaned over his hand, and then over the hand of the person who was standing on his right.

‘Leo, do you know our cousin Cardinal Julius?’

‘How could I have lived in Rome without knowing him?’

This was not the best reply in the circumstances. Julius de Medici was certainly the most flamboyant of all the princes of the Church, and the Pope’s trusted associate. But the latter had been reproaching him for some time for his escapades, his love of ostentation, his rowdy love affairs, which had made him the favourite target of the Lutherans. On the other hand, Guicciardini had spoken well of him: ‘Julius has all the qualities of the perfect gentleman, a patron of the arts, tolerant, good company. Why the devil should anyone want to make a man of religion out of him?’

In a red cape and skull cap, a fringe of black hair across the breadth of his forehead, the Pope’s cousin seemed engrossed in a painful meditation.

‘The cardinal must speak to you, my son. Sit yourselves together on those chairs over there. I myself have some mail to read.’

I do not believe that I am mistaken in stating that the Pope did not miss a single word of our conversation that day, since he did not turn a single page of the text which he had in his hands.

Julius seemed embarrassed, seeking some sign of complicity in my eyes. He cleared his throat discreetly.

‘A young person has just entered my service. Virtuous and beautiful. And intelligent. The Holy Father desires that I should present her to you, and that you should take her to wife. Her name is Maddalena.’

Having delivered himself of these words with a visible effort, he turned to other matters, asked me about my past, my travels, my life in Rome. I discovered he had the same appetite for knowledge as his cousin, the same rapture at hearing the names of Timbuktu, Fez and Cairo, the same respect for the things of the mind. He made me swear that one day I should commit an account of my travels to paper, promising to be my most eager reader.

The great pleasure which this conversation gave me did not however greatly reduce my profound suspicion towards the proposal which had been made to me. To state matters frankly, I had no desire at all to find myself the belated husband of some adolescent girl whose advanced state of pregnancy would set all the tongues of Rome wagging. However, it was difficult for me to say ‘No’ in a single word to the Pope and his cousin. Hence I formulated my reply in sufficiently roundabout terms to enable my feelings to show through:

‘I put myself in the hands of His Holiness and His Eminence, who know better than I what is good for my body and my soul.’

The sound of the Pope’s laughter made me jump. Putting down his mail, he turned round to face us squarely.

‘Leo will see the girl this very day, after the requiem mass.’

In fact that day was the commemoration, in the Sistine Chapel, of the first anniversary of the death of Raphael of Urbino, whom Leo X used to cherish more than all his other protégés. He often called him to mind with an unfeigned emotion, which made me regret having known him so little.

Because of my long period of seclusion, I had only met Raphael twice; the first time briefly in a corridor of the Vatican, the second time at my baptism. After the ceremony he had come up, like so many others, to offer his congratulations to the Pope, who had put him beside me. A question was burning on his lips:

‘Is it true that there are neither painters nor sculptors in your country?’

‘Some people do paint or sculpt, but all figurative representation is condemned. It is considered as a challenge to the Creator.’

‘It does our art too much honour to think that it can emulate the Creation.’

He made an astonished and somewhat condescending frown. I felt I had to reply:

‘Isn’t it true that after having made the statue of Moses Michelangelo ordered it to walk or speak?’

Raphael smiled maliciously.

‘So they say.’

‘That is what the people of my country seek to avoid. That a man should have the ambition to substitute himself for the Creator.’

‘And the prince who decides on life and death, does he not substitute himself for the Creator in a far more blasphemous fashion than the painter? And the master who possesses slaves, who buys and sells them?’

The painter’s voice rose. I tried to calm him:

‘One day I should like to visit your studio.’

‘If I were to decide to paint your portrait, would that be blasphemy?’

‘Not at all. It would be as if the most eloquent of our poets were to write a eulogy about me.’

I had not found a better comparison. He was content with it.

‘Very well. Come to my house when you wish.’

I had resolved to do so, but death had overtaken me. Of Raphael I remembered only a few words, a frown, a promise. It was my duty to think of him on that day of commemoration. But very quickly, already before the end of the ceremony, it was towards Maddalena that my thoughts turned.

I tried to imagine her, her hair, her voice, her figure; I asked myself in which language I should speak to her, with which words I should begin. I also tried to guess what Leo X and his cousin could have said to each other before summoning me. The Pope had probably discovered that the cardinal had just added a young and beautiful girl to his numerous retinue, and fearing some new scene, had ordered him to get rid of her, swiftly and in a dignified manner. In that way no one could claim that Cardinal Julius had shameful designs upon the girl; his sole concern was to find a wife for his cousin Leo the African!